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THE LESSON 



OF 



POPULAR GOVERNMENT 



BT 

GAMALIEL BRADFORD 



« Let none objecte this is men's corruption, and nothing to 
ye course itselfe. I answer, seeing all men have this corrup- 
tion in them, God in His wisdome saw another course titer for 
them." -Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation, p. 97. 



Vol. I 



THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1899 

All rights reserved 



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CorYRIGHT, X899, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



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NotfaooU $ress 

J. S. Cuihlng it Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 









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QLa fflg JFrfentig, 
WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON, 

OF THE NEW YORK * NA TION, 

EDWARD HENRY CLEMENT, 

OF THE BOSTON TRANSCRIPT, 

JOHN HENRY HOLMES, 

OF THE BOSTON HERALD, 

IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE LIBERALITY 
WITH WHICH THEIR JOURNALS WERE PLACED AT MY 
DISPOSAL DURING THE MANY YEARS IN WHICH THE 
VIEWS HEREIN EXPRESSED WERE TAKING SHAPE, 

Cfjts 33ook is IfaspectfuIIs Uefcicatrt. 



PREFACE 

Books, other than those for amusement, may be di- 
vided into didactic, historical, and argumentative. It is 
hardly necessary to say to which class the present work 
belongs. More than thirty years ago, in studies con- 
nected mainly with financial questions, my attention was 
attracted towards certain peculiarities in the political 
working of our institutions. Continued study and ob- 
servation have greatly strengthened and extended the 
impressions then received. 

For those whose idea of patriotism is to boast unceas- 
ingly that ours are the only human institutions which 
have attained perfection, that any public expression of 
doubt or criticism is little less than treason, and that all 
shortcomings and misdeeds must be charged to the per- 
versity and wickedness, or, at the very least, ignorance 
and folly, of the people, this book can have no meaning. 
To those, on the other hand, whose admiration and rev- 
erence for the Federal Constitution and the organization 
of our governments, for the wonderful combination of 
unified strength with local independence, are only in- 
creased by a consciousness of the strain to which they are 
exposed; who, taking note of the facts that the three 

millions of population have expanded to over seventy, to 

vii 



vm 



PREFACE 



a large extent of foreign importation, the thirteen states 
to forty-five, and the territory from a strip of seaboard on 
the Atlantic to the breadth of a continent bounded by 
two oceans, feel strongly that, while the principles of the 
government and the character of the people are still 
sound and reliable, some modifications and readjustments 
of the machinery must take place, unless we are to drift 
through practical anarchy and increasing corruption to 
military despotism ; — to such the most searching study 
and unsparing criticism will be welcome as furnishing 
light and guidance for the future. 

Such works as Mr. Bryce's "American Commonwealth " 
and Professor Woodrow Wilson's " Congressional Govern- 
ment " may well be said to mark an epoch, and are sup- 
ported by a host of lesser studies, though it is an anxious 
question whether they will be able to make any headway 
against the opposing forces. 

A large use has been made of extracts from other 
writers : first, in the hope of giving greater interest from 
variety of style, and secondly, because, since they are 
summoned as witnesses and experts, their testimony and 
arguments are much more forcible in their own words 
than in abstracts which might be suspected of prejudice. 

The modern history of France has been reviewed at 
some length from the point of view of the whole book, 
because of the profound instruction which it offers in 
relation to that of the United States, but those who do 
not care to follow the former may conveniently pass from 
Chapter VI. to Chapter XVI., or, indeed, from Chap- 
ter IV., containing an analogous view of English history. 



PKEFACE ix 

It may be hoped, however, that the interest of the later 
portion will induce them to recur to the comparative 
view. 

If the work shall furnish any stimulus to practical study 
and effort for the amelioration of our politics, the devo- 
tion by the author of half the allotted term of human life 
will have been repaid. 

The Austerfibld, Boston, Mass., 
October, 1898. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Vol. I 

CHAPTER I 
Universal Suffrage 

PAGE 

A new force in the world 1 

Its representation unknown till this century .... 1 

Proof from the example of Great Britain 2 

Proof from the example of France 3 

From Switzerland and Germany . . . . ... . . 5 

From Spain 6 

From Italy and Dutch Republic 7 

From Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Greece . . 8 

From United States, Central and South America ... 9 

From British colonies in the Pacific Ocean 9 

No evidence of value before this century 10 

Three forms of political bodies 10 

Use of the term in this work defined i . . . 12 

Woman suffrage 13 

CHAPTER H 

Some Criticisms of Democracy 

President Woolsey on political science ...... 15 

Francis Parkman . . 16 

Sir Henry Maine . . . . . . . . . .18 

Evidence of a century \ 24 

In Great Britain 25^ 

In France <J1 

In Spain 32 

In Italy and the German Empire . 33 

In the United States 34 

xi 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER in 
Organization in Democracy ' 



Universal suffrage inevitable 
Success a question of machinery . 

Nature of the force 

Two motives, self-interest and moral enthusiasm 
Latter aroused by personality 

One man power 

Executive essential branch of government . 
Neither people nor legislature can govern . 
Danger from legislature .... 
Relation of the two branches ... 
Illustration from the old confederation of American States 



37 
38 
38 
40 
41 
43 
43 
44 
45 
46 
50 



CHAPTER IV 
Popular Government in Great Britain 

Formation of modern society 57 

Long Parliament in England 58 

Government of Cromwell 61 

Government of William and Mary 63 

Development of modern government in Great Britain . . 64 

The Privy Council and the Cabinet 65 

Cabinet government not known at our Revolution ... 66 

Corruption and escape from it 69 

Summary of chapter 72 



CHAPTER V 
Cabinet Government in Great Britain 

Description of Cabinet 74 

Presence of ministers in Parliament 76 

Conditions involved 78 

Functions of ministers in Parliament 79 

Responsibility of ministers to Parliament 83 

The opposition 85 

Conduct of business 87 

Dissolution of Parliament 90 

J. S. Mill on limitation of legislature 91 



CONTENTS xiii 

CHAPTER VI 
Cabinet Government in Great Britain (Continued) 

PAGE 

The Speaker of the House of Commons 92 

Three attributes of the ministry 95 

Beginning of Parliamentary Reform 96 

The Manchester massacre 99 

How civil war was averted . . . • 101 

Financial Reform 105 

Corn Law Reform 107 

Defects of Cabinet system 109 

Gneist on the English Constitution . . . . . .113 

CHAPTER VH 
France before the Revolution 

Study of Revolution freer from passion 115 

Race and circumstances in English and French history . . 116 
Difference of royal taxation in the two countries . . .117 

From Louis XL policy of French kings was divide and rule . 121 

Centralization in France 124 

Government by Intendants . . 124 

Church and State in France and England 128 

Parallel of modern history in the two countries .... 131 

CHAPTER Vin 

The French Revolution 

Convocation of the Notables 133 

The States General 134 

Comparison with Long Parliament and Philadelphia Convention 135 

H. M. Stephens, "Orators of the French Revolution" . . 137 

Opposing forces 139 

Character of work to be done 140 

Finances, assignats, socialism 143 

Mirabeau's plan of executive power 144 

Self-denying ordinance ; France and England .... 146 

Work of National Assembly « 147 



xiv CONTENTS 



PAGB 



The Legislative Assembly 148 

The Jacobin Club 149 

Development of the Paris Commune 153 

Marat 155 

Danton 156 

Robespierre 158 

CHAPTER IX 

France in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 

Reaction from the Reign of Terror 162 

Royalists crushed by Augereau, September 4, 1797 . . . 165 

Republic of Naples . . . . . . . . 166 

Consulate and empire 167 

Internal rule of Napoleon 169 

His educational system 170 

Effects of his rule on the French people 173 

The Restoration 174 

The Revolution of July 179 

Compared with English Revolution of 1688 .... 180 

Pe'rier, Thiers, and Guizot 180 

Government of Louis Philippe 185 

What might have been in England 187 

CHAPTER X 

Fall of the Monarchy of July 

Reasons for expecting success 189 

Situation of the government at end of 1845 .... 190 

Publications in 1847 by Michelet, Louis Blanc, and Lamartine . 192 

Agitation for parliamentary reform — The banquets . . . 193 

Signs of approaching revolution 195 

The National Guard 200 

The outbreak of February 23, 1848 202 

Guizot resigns 205 

Ministry formed under Thiers 207 

Abdication and flight of the king 208 

Departure of the Duchess of Orleans 211 

Causes of failure 212 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER XI 
The Revolution of 1848 

FAGE 

Populace of London and Paris 215 

De Tocqueville as to the Revolution 216 

Character of the new Legislative Assembly 219 

Formation of the new government 221 

Men composing it . 222 

Accepted by the country 226 

Difficulties to be met 227 

Formation of national workshops 228 

Commission on the constitution 231 

Strife of classes 234 

The days of June 238 

CHAPTER XII 

France. The Second Empire 

Three factions striving for rule 240 

Revival of Napoleon worship . 241 

Presidential election of 1848 243 

Defeat of constitutional amendment to make the president 

reeligible . 246 

Possible alternatives of the coup d'etat 247 

Instruments of the work 249 

Character of the empire 251 

The intervention of Prussia 252 

"The French Scare of 1875" 256 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Siege and the Commune op Paris 

Paris in September, 1870 . . . 257 

Formation of the government of national defence . . . 258 

Men composing it 259 

Paris besieged. Ferrieres ........ 262 

Resources of the city 264 

Crisis of October 31 265 



xvi CONTENTS 

Plebiscite demanded November 1 267 

Events in the provinces 269 

Negotiations for peace 272 

The Commune and the National Guard 275 

The central committee 277 

Danger began with armistice 279 

Causes of the disaster 280 

Moral causes of the insurrection 283 

The Germans at Versailles 285 



CHAPTER XIV 

France. The Third Republic 

The same problem in France and the United States . . . 287 

Difficulties of electing an Assembly 288 

Assembly at Bordeaux 289 

Thiers elected chief executive 291 

One man compared with a committee 293 

Encroachment of the Assembly 294 

MacMahon succeeds Thiers 297 

Is succeeded by M. Gre'vy 300 

Development of the Republic 301 

Analysis by M. Lamy 302 

What it shows 310 

CHAPTER XV 

The Third Republic (Continued) 

Constitutional argument of De Broglie 312 

The power of dissolution 317 

What a president might do 318 

His impotence 319 

Standing committee system in France 320 

Effect on the " Budget " 322 

Difference of English and French procedure .... 324 

Effect on the men in public life 325 

French methods tend to socialism 326 

Effect on legislation 329 

Effect on finance 830 



CONTENTS 



xvii 



PAGE 

Bodley's "France" 332 

His conclusions examined 333 

How the future of France might be modified . . . . 343 

The Dreyfus case 345 



CHAPTER XVI 



The President of the United States 

Causes of difference of English and French history . . . 350 

Executive power in the United States 352 

Presidential election by States 354 

High personal character of Presidents 356 

Why great men are not chosen ....... 356 

Limited power of President 357 

Contrary arguments examined 362 

Futility of veto 366 

Limited power produces limited men 370 

Methods of nomination 372 

Apparent and real meaning of election 375 

Election by people compared with that by legislature . . . 380 






CHAPTER XVH 



Government by Legislature 



No constitutional separation of powers 

Danger from encroachment by the legislature 

Analysis of Congress .... 

The whip and the lobbyist . 

No national representative in the House 

And none of administration . 

Government by standing committees . 

The Speaker 

Opportunities for corruption 

The United States Senate 

Difference of House and Senate procedure 

Weakness and anarchy of the House . 



385 
387 
389 
389 
390 
394 
396 
398 
402 
405 



xviii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XVIII 
Government by Legislature (Continued) 

PAGE 

Effect of procedure upon members 409 

Position in Congress 411 

Two kinds of members 412 

Small share of voters in selecting members 415 

Public office not something to do, but to get .... 416 

Why best men do not go into politics 419 

Mr. Bryce's explanations examined 420 

Effect of political methods on voters 426 

Danger of growing strife between classes 429 

Beneficial effect of universal suffrage 430 

CHAPTER XIX 

Government by Legislature {Continued) 

Effects upon legislation 432 

Initiative open to every member of either House .... 432 

Members represent only districts or States 432 

President and Cabinet representing whole nation and adminis- 
tration have no voice 432 

Spoils system replaced by money as motive power . . . 434 

Example of tariff in administration 435 

Comparison with Great Britain 437 

Civil service reform in the United States 440 

Comparison with Great Britain 444 

Slavery conflict in the United States 452 

Compared with parliamentary reform in Great Britain . . 455 

What might have been in the United States .... 456 

CHAPTER XX 

Public Finance 

Domestic compared with public finance 459 

British compared with American finance 460 

Management of United States public debt 461 

Effect of high tariff as a political instrument .... 463 



CONTENTS 



xix 



PAGB 



Counteracted by pension list 465 

Separate treatment of revenue and expenditure .... 466 

Renewed increase of public debt 467 

Treatment of the currency worse than that of debt . . . 469 

Theory of currency 470 

Nature and fluctuations of bank deposits 471 

Rapidity of circulation 474 

English treatment of currency 477 

That of the United States 480 

Secretary Chase and legal tender notes 484 

Establishment of national banks 485 

The invasion of silver 487 

Importance of the subject 491 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Spirit of Party 

Washington's farewell address . 492 

Party and faction 493 

Basis of parties , 495 

Parties in Great Britain 496 

Republican party in the United States . . . . . . 497 

Want of party discipline in Congress 498 

Republicans and Democrats 501 

Attempts to form new parties 503 

Proportional representation 505 

How parties are held together 508 

The obligation of party 509 

Effect of existing parties on voters 512 

The case of Venezuela . . . 513 

Consequences of war spirit in Congress 518 

Why the judiciary is not discussed 519 



THE LESSON 

OF 

POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

CHAPTER I 

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 

"FT sounds like a truism to say that within little more 
-*- than a century a force has made its appearance in the 
world which was never before known, and which, having 
already changed the whole face of human society, points 
to still greater changes in the future. Allusion is made, 
however, in the present case, not to either steam or elec- 
tricity, to the locomotive engine or the telegraph or the 
telephone — not to a physical, but a moral force ; that is, 
the carrying on of governments, if only in theory, in 
accordance with the expressed wish of the great mass 
of the people. The phrase ' little more than a century ' 
is strictly correct, because the modern system of repre- 
sentation, based upon the votes of a whole people, is cer- 
tainly not older than our Federal Constitution. There 
may have been governments, as in the old Teutonic 
tribes, where all the people had a direct voice in mak- 
ing the laws. There have, of course, been governments, 
as in Venice and England before this century, carried 
on by selected members of certain classes. But none of 
these answer the conditions of what is now known as 
government by universal suffrage. Athens is supposed 
to be the typical democracy of antiquity. Yet at a time 

B l 



2 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

when Athens had more than half a million of inhabitants, 
the demos or active people, the assembly of citizens, was 
never over twenty thousand, and there were seldom more 
than six thousand present at the public assembly, a sort 
of exaggerated town meeting. 1 In Rome, what was 
meant by the plebs or people seems to have been the 
richer classes of citizens, and the struggle for power was 
between them and the patricians. The mass of small 
tradesmen, workmen, and slaves had little to do with 
the government beyond their power as a mob. 

To show how modern the system really is, it may be 
worth while to examine the dates of introduction of a 
widely extended suffrage among the leading nations. 

In Great Britain, down to 1832, the representation was 
about on the same basis as in the reign of Henry VI. 
The knights of the shire were nominees of the nobles and 
great landowners; the borough members were returned 
by the Crown, by noble patrons, or by close corporations 
of self -elected burgesses, and even the representation of 
cities, with greater pretensions to independence, was con- 
trolled by bribery. By the reform bill of 1832 the first 
great change was made. About one hundred and Mtj 
nomination members of Parliament were disfranchised and 
their places filled by members elected from the large 
towns and counties. In the towns those occupying 
houses worth 150 a year were given votes, while in the 
counties tenants at will paying rents of $250 a year, 
and those holding leases for terms of years at $50 a 
year, were also given the franchise. 

By the reform bill of 1867-68 the franchise was ex- 
tended in the boroughs to lodgers in tenements worth 
$50 a year unfurnished, and all occupiers of dwellings 
which were assessed for poor rates. In counties the 
qualification was reduced for holders of leases from #50 

1 Woolsey, » Political Science," Vol. I., pp. 206, 483. 



i UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 3 

to $25 a year, and for tenants at will from rents of 
1250 to those of $50, so that in practice every one could 
vote who had a fixed home. 1 The voters were, in 1886, 
for the whole of Great Britain, according to Whitaker's 
Almanac, 6,067,131, an average of 9055 electors to each 
member. We need not now discuss the effect of these 
changes, but merely observe how great and how recent 
they are. It may be remarked incidentally, however, 
that in 1854 was passed the Corrupt Practices Act, to pre- 
vent bribery at elections ; that in 1868 the House of Com- 
mons surrendered its power of deciding disputed elections, 
transferring it to the courts ; and that in 1872 the Ballot 
Act was passed, enabling votes to be cast secretly and with- 
out intimidation. 

In France the first States-General was held under Philip 
the Fair in 1302. Having a quarrel with the Pope, the 
king summoned an assembly which was composed of a 
large number of ecclesiastics, thirty-one princes and nobles, 
with magistrates and citizens of the principal cities of 
France. Similar assemblies were held at pretty wide 
intervals during the next three centuries. When the king 
sent out a summons the nobles and the clergy sent what 
deputies they chose, and the inhabitants in the towns and 
villages chose electors at their discretion, who in turn 
came together and chose deputies to the States-General. 
As the king, the royal family, and the great ministers of 
state were present, it is evident that the power of the peo- 

1 Qualifications in England are now a freehold or copyhold of £5 
yearly value, leasehold of £5 yearly value for sixty years or more, lease- 
hold of £50 yearly value for twenty years or more, in counties or towns 
which rank as counties. The occupier of land or tenements of the yearly 
value of £10 is qualified to vote in any part of the United Kingdom. The 
inhabitant occupier of a dwelling-house or of any part of a house occupied 
as a separate dwelling is qualified, but throughout the United Kingdom 
both these franchises are dependent upon payment of rate. Lodgers occu- 
pying rooms of the yearly value of £10 value are also qualified. — Cham- 
bers' Cyclopaedia, 1891, article " Franchise." 



4 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

pie was not great. They could do little but present their 
grievances, of which the king took such notice as he 
pleased. The idea of representation was there, but not in 
its modern form. No States-General met after 1614 till 
the Revolution, and when Louis XVI., under the pressure 
of financial necessity, wished to call a similar body in 
1789, so little was known of the old procedure that 
scholars were employed to make a study of it. By the 
constitution of 1791 voters must be twenty-five years old, 
be domiciled in a city or canton for a period required by 
law, pay taxes equal to three days' labor and show a receipt 
for them, and must not be a servant at wages. The elec- 
tion was double; that is, the voters chose electors and the 
electors deputies, and the electors of the second degree 
were limited to those who paid taxes equal to two hundred 
days' labor. By the constitution of 1814 the pecuniary 
qualification for an elector was fixed at $60 in taxes and 
for a deputy $200 in taxes. The number of voters for all 
France was thereby limited to seventy thousand in a 
population of twenty-eight millions. By the constitution 
of 1830 the qualification of voters was reduced to $40 in 
taxes, while members of the Institute and officers of the 
army and navy were allowed to vote upon payment of $20 
taxes. Even these conditions kept down the number of 
voters to a very small proportion of the population and 
there were charges of extensive corruption among these 
by the use of offices. An attempt at a reform movement, 
such as had recently been so successful in England, brought 
on the Revolution of 1848. Then for the first time was 
established a National Assembly with direct election by 
the whole people, every Frenchman having a vote, with- 
out pecuniary qualification, who had reached the age of 
twenty-one years, had resided six months in the commune, 
and was in the enjoyment of civil and political rights. 
The Emperor Louis Napoleon professed to base his title 



i UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 5 

upon popular election, and however little of real power 
the people possessed, the form of universal suffrage was 
kept up, the plebiscite amounting in 1870 to nearly nine 
millions of votes in a population of thirty-six millions. 

Switzerland down to 1798 was composed of a confedera- 
tion of aristocratically governed states, as loosely bound 
together as that of the United States before 1789, and 
having pretty fully developed most of the evils which in 
the latter were making themselves felt. To quote the 
writer who has given perhaps the best analysis of existing 
Swiss institutions : * — 

These aristocracies were particularly obnoxious to the revolutionists 
of France, and after the latter had sufficiently cured the evils of human 
society in their own country, they determined to rectify the political 
affairs of Switzerland according to their views of the rights of man. 
According to the government then established the central legislature 
consisted of a Grand Council of Representatives, elected from the 
cantons according to population. After a brief period of five years 
this arrangement was modified by Napoleon; while the changes of 
1815 and 1830 carried back the central government to the condition 
of the previous century. 

It was only in the constitution of 1848 that the present rule was 
adopted, by which every Swiss who has completed twenty years of 
age, and who in addition is not excluded from the rights of a voter by 
the legislation of the canton in which he is domiciled, has the right to 
vote in the elections for the National Council and in popular votes. 

Germany down to the first French Revolution consisted 
of a maze of despotisms, some three hundred in number, 
of greater or less size, in which popular power was un- 
known. In 1815 the number of potentates was reduced 
to forty. The Diet consisted merely of representatives of 
the princes, whose one object was to stifle popular progress 
in any province where it might break out. Whenever the 
people of a single state endeavored to obtain free institu- 

1 "State and Federal Government in Switzerland," by John Martin 
Vincent, Ph.D., Librarian and Instructor in Johns Hopkins University. 
Baltimore, 1891. 



6 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tions the Diet found occasion to interfere in favor of des- 
potic power. Prussia, by the constitution of 1850 and as 
a consequence of the Revolution of 1848, established a 
House of Deputies, to be rilled by universal suffrage with 
double election. Austria in 1860 established a Diet of 
one hundred members, chosen by the provincial diets. 
In the German Empire, by the imperial constitution of 
1871, it was first provided that the Reichstag or Imperial 
Parliament should be elected by direct universal suffrage, 
at the average rate of one deputy to one hundred thousand 
of population. Every German having reached twenty- 
five years of age, in good standing and belonging for at 
least a year to one of the confederated states, is entitled to 
a vote. It is an important exception, however, both in 
the case of Germany and France, that soldiers in the active 
army are not allowed to vote either in the local elections 
or for the Chamber of Deputies. 

In the Spain which was ruled by Philip II. and the 
Catholic Inquisition there could be little room for popu- 
lar power. The first approach to it was in the constitu- 
tion of 1812, extorted from Ferdinand VII. and afterwards 
so grossly violated. By it all the inhabitants of the 
parishes were to assemble and choose delegates to what 
we should call a " convention " of the department. This 
convention chose delegates to a convention of the prov- 
ince and the convention of the province chose deputies 
to the single chamber of the Cortes. This latter was, 
therefore, three removes from the people. The constitu- 
tion of 1869 first established direct universal suffrage for 
the popular chamber of the Cortes, with the ratio of one 
deputy to each fifty thousand inhabitants. The franchise 
was, however, still more restricted than in France or 
Great Britain. The voter must be twenty-five years of 
age, and, besides being in the enjoyment of civil and 
political rights, must have paid a tax upon realty of $5 



I UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 7 

for one year, or a personal property tax of $10 for two 
years, though an exception was made in this respect in 
favor of certain literary and official classes. 

" The geographical expression " known as Italy was 
even more backward than Spain. The first constitution 
established was that granted in 1848 by Charles Albert 
to the kingdom of Sardinia and which was subsequently 
extended to the whole peninsula. When the Austrians 
offered to replace his son, Victor Emmanuel, on his throne 
by the force of bayonets if he would consent to abolish 
the constitution, that hero replied : " No ! We have sworn 
to observe it and we will keep faith, even if we have to 
emigrate to America." He lived to reap his reward. In 
Italy, as in Spain, with one deputy to each fifty thousand 
inhabitants, there is a considerable pecuniary qualification 
attached to the vote, the requirements being, 

1. That the voter shall be in the enjoyment of civil and 

political rights, irrespective of religion. 

2. That he shall be able to read and write. 

3. That he shall be twenty-five years of age. 

4. That he shall have paid an annual tax equivalent to $8. 

Here, also, as in Spain, exception is made in this last 
respect in favor of certain literary and official classes. 

The famous Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century 
was a confederation of provinces more or less aristocrati- 
cally governed, as was that of Venice. 1 The constitution 
of modern Holland dates from 1815, with modifications 
in 1840 and 1848. Voters under it must be twenty -three 
years of age, enjoying full civil and political rights and 
pay taxes varying in the different provinces from $8 to 
the smallest of which sums reduces the voters to a 



1 1 am indebted for much of this information to the work entitled 
u Constitutions Europe'enes," par G. Demombynes, Avocat a la Cour 
d'Appel de Paris. Paris, 1881. 



8 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

small proportion even of the adult male population. In 
the popular chamber there is one deputy to about forty- 
five thousand inhabitants. 

Belgium, having been a part of the kingdom of the 
Netherlands, first received a separate constitution in 1831. 
Under it voters must be either born or duly naturalized 
citizens, twenty-one years of age, and pay at least $8.50 
in direct taxes. A voter cannot be registered unless he 
proves that he possesses that sum for the current year, 
and has actually paid it for three years previous. The 
effect of this was to limit the suffrage to one in thirteen 
of adult males or one in fifty of the total population. 
It was not till 1893 that a constitutional change increased 
the voters by tenfold. 1 

In Denmark, by the constitution of June 5, 1849, which 
was somewhat modified in 1866, the popular chamber 
is chosen by direct suffrage of all inhabitants thirty 
years of age, in good standing, and domiciled for one year, 
with the exclusion of those receiving public charity or 
domestic wages, unless having a separate house. 

In Norway, by the constitution of 1814, the people 
choose deputies at the rate of one to fifty voters in towns 
and one to one hundred in the country, and these deputies 
elect from themselves and other voters the representatives 
in the Storthing. Electors must be twenty -five years 
of age, resident for five years, and, except in the case of 
officials, possessing in the country a farm either in free- 
hold or under lease for more than five years. In cities 
they must be burgesses or possess house or land of a value 
of $350. 

The Swedish constitution, though it dates from 1809, was 
only placed on a popular basis in 1866. Every elector for 
the popular chamber must be twenty-five years of age, 
domiciled in a commune, and must possess either — 
1 See post, Chap. XXVII. 



i UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 9 

1. Property or usufruct of real estate valued for assess- 

ment at $280, or 

2. Have a lease for life, or at least five years, of farm 

property valued at $1680, or 

3. Pay to the State a tax calculated on an annual revenue 

of $225. 

In the kingdom of Greece, by the constitution of 1864 
and the electoral law of 1877, every male member of a 
commune aged twenty-one years is entitled to a vote for 
the popular chamber. 

Crossing the Atlantic, we find that under the Federal 
Constitution the qualifications of voters for the House of 
Representatives are those fixed by the states for the cor- 
responding body. In Massachusetts the constitution of 
1780 required the possession of a freehold estate in a 
town of <£3 annual income, or of any estate valued at 
.£60, and it was not till 1822 that this was changed to 
the payment of any tax. Connecticut till 1845 required 
the possession of a freehold of the annual value of $7. 
Rhode Island till 1842 required real estate of the value 
of $134, or which was rented for $7. In New York the 
constitution of 1777, which continued in force till 1826, 
required a freehold of £20 value, or the rental of a 
tenement of the yearly value of 40 shillings. New 
Jersey till 1844, Virginia till 1850, North Carolina till 
1865, and Pennsylvania and Delaware till 1873, enforced 
pecuniary qualifications which were much more important 
than they seem at present. The majority of our present 
state constitutions did not exist till within this century. 
In the whole of Central and South America there was 
nothing like popular government until after the revolt 
from Spain in the third decade of this century. The 
great commonwealths which are growing up in the 
Pacific Ocean — Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand 



10 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 



CHAP. 



— did not come into being till the century was well 
advanced. 

From what has been said, therefore, it may fairly be 
concluded that no criticisms upon democracy, so far as 
that term applies to governments representative of uni- 
versal suffrage, have any weight of precedent or experience 
prior to this century, for the reason that the thing did not 
exist in its present form. It cannot be shown that the 
circumstances were applicable to the present question. As 
far as history is in point we are debarred from going 
back of the nineteenth century. Unless thus modern in 
date any evidence can only be based upon the principles 
of human nature, as to which we need to be very careful 
that the analysis is accurate and the inferences legitimate. 

A quotation may be given in illustration of this. 

There have been three ways in which great political bodies have 
arisen. The earliest and lowest method was that of conquest without 
incorporation. A single powerful tribe conquered and annexed its 
neighbors without admitting them to a share in the government. It 
appropriated their military strength, robbed them of most of the 
fruits of their labor, and thus virtually enslaved them. Such states 
degenerate rapidly in military strength. Their slavish populations, 
accustomed to be starved and beaten or massacred by the tax-gath- 
erer, become unable to fight, so that great armies of them will flee 
before a handful of freemen, as in the case of the ancient Persians 
and the modern Egyptians. To strike down the executive head of 
such an assemblage of enslaved tribes is to effect the conquest or the 
dissolution of the whole mass, and hence the history of Eastern peo- 
ples has been characterized by sudden and gigantic revolutions. 

The second method of forming great political bodies was that of 
conquest with incorporation. The conquering tribe, while annexing its 
neighbors, gradually admitted them to a share in the government. In 
this way arose the Roman Empire, the largest, the most stable, and in 
its best days the most pacific political aggregate the world had as yet 
seen. Throughout the best part of Europe its conquests succeeded 
in transforming the ancient predatory type of society into the mod- 
ern industrial type. It effectually broke up the primeval clan system, 
with its narrow ethical idea, and arrived at the broad conception of 
rights and duties coextensive with humanity. But in the method 
upon which Rome proceeded there was an essential element of weak- 



i UNIVEKSAL SUFFRAGE 11 

ness. The simple device of representation, by which political power 
is equally retained in all parts of the community, while its exercise 
is delegated to a central body, was entirely unknown to the Romans. 
Partly for this reason and partly because of the terrible military press- 
ure to which the frontier was perpetually exposed, the Roman gov- 
ernment became a despotism which gradually took on many of the 
vices of the Oriental type. 

The third and highest method of forming great political bodies is 
that of federation. The element of fighting was essential in the two 
lower methods, but in this it is not essential. Here there is no con- 
quest, but a voluntary union of small political groups with a great 
political group. Each little group preserves its local independence 
intact, while forming a part of an indissoluble whole. Obviously this 
method of political union requires both high intelligence and high 
ethical development. In early times it was impracticable. It was 
first attempted, with brilliant though ephemeral success, by the 
Greeks ; but it failed for want of the device of representation. In 
later times it was put into operation with permanent success, on a 
small scale by the Swiss and on a great scale by our forefathers in 
England. The coalescence of shires into the kingdom of England, 
effected as it was by means of a representative assembly, and accom- 
panied by the general retention of local self-government, afforded a 
distinct precedent for such a gigantic federal union as men of Eng- 
lish race have since constructed in America. The principle of fed- 
eration was there, though not the name. 

And here we hit upon the fundamental contrast between the his- 
tory of England and France. The method by which the modern 
French nation has been built up has been the Roman method of con- 
quest with incorporation. As the ruler of Paris gradually overcame 
his vassals, one after another, by warfare or diplomacy, he annexed 
their countries to his royal domain and governed them by lieutenants 
sent from Paris. Self-government was thus crushed out in France, 
while it was preserved in England. And just as Rome acquired its 
unprecedented dominion by adopting a political method more effec- 
tive than any that had been hitherto employed, so England, employ- 
ing for the first time a still higher and more effective method, has 
come to play a part in the world compared with which even the part 
played by Rome seems insignificant. The test of the relative strength 
of the English and Roman methods came when England and France 
contended for the possession of North America. The people which 
preserved its self-government could send forth self-supporting colo- 
nies ; the people which had lost the very tradition of self-government 
could not. Hence the dominion of the sea, with that of all the out- 
lying parts of the earth, fell into the hands of men of English race ; 
and hence the federative method of political union — the method 



12 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

which contains every element of permanence and which is peaceful in 
its very conception — is already assuming a sway which is unquestion- 
ably destined to become universal. 1 

It will be seen hereafter how strongly we insist upon 
these ideas in maintaining that the difference between the 
English and French people is much more that of history 
and circumstances than that of race; as also how they 
bear upon the tendency of the momentous changes which 
we have described as taking place in the governments of 
the United States. 

Inasmuch as the phrase 4 universal suffrage ' must be 
used more or less in a conventional sense, it seems de- 
sirable at the outset to define as closely as possible the 
meaning in which the words will be employed through- 
out this work. In adopting as a substitute the phrase 
4 adult manhood suffrage,' there are still modifications to 
be made. These exclude, almost of course, paupers re- 
ceiving state aid, criminals, and men who have for any 
reason lost their civil rights, a penalty which, perhaps, 
might be applied with desirable effect to some offences 
against society not coming strictly under the head of 
crime. Some restrictions also as to length of residence, 
whether in the country, state, district, or town, or more 
strictly under one roof, seem not unreasonable whether as 
to voting or naturalization. Moderate requirements as 
to education, such as reading and writing, especially in 
countries where a common school education is compulsory 
and in a large measure gratuitous, seem to be both just 
and expedient. Nor do these conditions exclude such 
moderate poll tax as any man not actually in circum- 
stances of destitution should be willing to pay for the 
privileges of citizenship. The principal restriction, which 
is objected to as unjust and unwise, is in such property 
qualifications for the right of voting as may exclude or 

i John Fiske, "The Destiny of Man," Chap. XIII. 



I UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 13 

weigh heavily upon a large class of the population simply 
because they are poor, and which must therefore shut out 
the large majority from any voice in the government. 

With regard to woman suffrage, as it seems at once 
impossible to pass it by in silence and profitless to enter 
upon a full discussion, the reasons may be briefly stated 
why it is in this work not taken into consideration. 
While the actual daily work of carrying on the world as 
it is is of necessity intrusted almost wholly to men, the far 
higher and nobler mission is given to women of preparing 
the conditions under which it is to be conducted in the 
long and permanent future. Even in the most primitive 
states of society the quality of the rising generation, to a 
great extent physically but in a far wider and more im- 
portant sense morally, is dependent upon the women ; and 
this becomes very much more true as civilization advances. 
From early childhood to maturity, even in the case of 
boys, the plastic influence of the father is comparatively 
slight, and in the case of girls the action of the mother 
continues still later in life. The claims of society are 
in the same direction. The match-making tendency of 
mothers is often a subject of ridicule, but if we consider 
how deeply the happiness of both sexes, but especially of 
women, is involved in the result of marriage, it is impossi- 
ble to overestimate the thought and anxiety which every 
true woman will give to the subject in the case of her 
children. 

If, then, in the economy of nature the training of chil- 
dren is the essential function of woman, it is of the first 
necessity that her attention and her energy should be con- 
centrated in the home. The excitement and distraction 
which must follow from any effective participation in poli- 
tics, the intrigue and pressure which would be brought 
to bear upon her, could not but work serious injury in this 
respect. No doubt there is a large part of the female sex 



14 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, i 

which remains unmarried, or being married has no chil- 
dren. It will hardly be maintained, however, that the 
right of suffrage should be limited to this class, which 
probably forms a minority of the whole. It will be said 
that single women with property are unrepresented, to 
which we reply that property as such does not enter into 
our scheme of representation. It is a matter of common 
observation how many women, having gained laborious 
and expensive acquirements with a view to an independent 
existence, give them all up upon marriage and devote 
themselves to their families ; and, again, in the average 
American family, how powerful are the influence and con- 
trol exercised by the women over the men, an influence all 
the more effective through its separation from external 
affairs, and which would be seriously lowered by partici- 
pating in the conflicts of the political arena. 

While, therefore, every opportunity which could affect 
v the condition of individual women who have no claims 
upon them, every advantage of education, of employment, 
of entry into professions, should be freely laid open to 
them, a requirement which, like the suffrage, should affect 
the social status of woman as a whole may yet be logically 
regarded as undesirable. Granting, for the sake of argu- 
ment, that the character of politics might upon the whole 
be raised by female voting, it may still be maintained that 
this would be purchased at too great a sacrifice by break- 
ing down the barrier which reserves to woman a separate 
and sacred mission in the world. 



CHAPTER II 

SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 

rriHOSE persons, who look with foreboding upon the 
-*- future of popular government and the dangers of 
the increasing tendency towards basing political power 
upon universal suffrage, may be said to take their depart- 
ure from one proposition, — that as the great mass of a 
people are and must be poor and ignorant, they cannot 
understand political questions, and that the narrowness 
of their lives and the want of control over their passions 
must make their political action both unreliable and un- 
safe. It may be doubted, however, whether observation 
and experience of men on a wide scale in civilized coun- 
tries do not show that those who are well-to-do, and even 
those who have enjoyed a higher education, are on the 
average quite as ignorant in political matters as the 
ordinary laborer, while their greater social needs and 
the constant struggle to maintain their position make 
them quite as selfish and grasping, as prejudiced and 
unjust, as those who have little hope of obtaining more 
than a precarious subsistence. 

President Woolsey, in his work on " Political Science," * 
says : — 

We have felt ourselves obliged to maintain that universal suffrage 
does not secure the government of the wisest, nor even secures the 
liberties of a country placed under such a democratic constitution, 
much less secures its order and stability. 

* Vol. I., p. 803. 
15 



16 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

It may well be asked whether any degree of restriction 
of the suffrage has in history produced these results, and 
whether even order and stability have not sometimes, as 
under the two Napoleons, been purchased at too high a 
cost. 

The persons best qualified to choose will, in the long run, choose 
the best officers ; 

which, apparently an axiom, is open to question, first, 
as to the definition of the major premise, and, second, 
whether the clause does not require the addition of two 
words; namely, u for themselves." 

If the classes of the community in question (that is, the poorer) 
are entirely honest, their situation in life prevents them from taking 
large views of public policy, and thus they will cast their votes for 
small men ; they will misjudge the character of candidates for office. 

If one were to assert, on the other hand, that this is 
no more true of the poor and numerous class than of the 
comparatively small number who are favored with wealth 
or culture' or both, the difference is not to be settled by 
logic or metaphysics, but, as in other sciences, by an 
appeal to facts, for which, as has been shown, history pre- 
vious to this century does not furnish adequate material. 

Let us call two witnesses as a sample of all the writers 
in the direction indicated by President Woolsey. The 
late Mr. Francis Parkman, of Boston, whose position as 
a man and a historian entitles everything he has said 
to respect, published an article in the North American 
Review for 1878, upon "The Failure of Universal Suf- 
frage," from which the following extracts are taken: — 

Crowded cities, where the irresponsible and ignorant were numeri- 
cally equal, or more than equal, to the rest, and where the weakest 
and most worthless was a match by his vote for the wisest and the 
best ; bloated wealth and envious poverty ; a tinselled civilization above 
and a discontented proletariat beneath, — all these have broken rudely 
upon the dreams of equal brotherhood, once cherished by those who 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 17 

made their wish the father of the thought, and fancied that this 
favored land formed an exception to the universal laws of human 
nature. They cried out for elevating the masses, but the masses 
have sunk lower. They called for the diffusion of wealth, but wealth 
has gathered into more numerous and portentous accumulations. 

It remains an open question whether the facts justify 
all these assertions 5 whether the course of events is any 
worse, or not better, than in countries with more re- 
stricted suffrage ; or whether they show that there would 
be any gain from restricting the suffrage here. 

Mountains and mole hills, deserts and fertile valleys, and all the 
universal inequality of Nature are but types of inequality in men. 
To level the outward world would turn it into barrenness, and to 
level human minds to one stature would make them barren as well. 
The masses left to themselves are hardly capable of any progress, 
except material progress and even that imperfectly. 

If there is one word in the language which excites hos- 
tility in the opponents of popular government, it is Equal- 
ity. They insist that men are not and cannot be equal, 
either physically, intellectually, or socially, which may be 
granted in full without its disproving either the justice or 
expediency of giving a vote to all. Surely the poorest 
and meanest has the right to express his approval of, or 
dissatisfaction with, the government under which he lives. 
Whether he makes such bad use of this right as to justify 
the depriving him of it, is a question of fact and not of 
the meaning of the word 'Equality.' 

The highest man may comprehend the lowest, but the lowest can 
no more comprehend the highest than if he belonged to another order 
of beings, as for some purposes he practically does. Demos, in his 
vague way, fancies that aggregated ignorance and weakness will bear 
the fruits of wisdom. Shall we look for an ideal security in that 
which tends to a barren average and a weary uniformity, treats men 
like cattle, counts them by the head, and gives them a vote apiece 
without asking them whether or not they have the sense to use it, — 
or in that which recognizes the inherent differences between man and 
man, gives the preponderance of power to character and intelligence, 



18 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

yet removes artificial barriers, keeps circulation free through all its 
parts, and rewards merit when it appears with added influence ? 



Mr. Parkman admits that this last is an imaginary state 
of things, and the language is that of one who has hardly 
set himself to think out calmly the full import of what he 
is saying. To express bitter dissatisfaction with the con- 
dition in which one is placed is to convey an impression 
that any change may be for the better, and though the 
intention may be only to awaken so much of discontent as 
to create a demand for better things, yet the tendency is 
to reconcile the mass of unthinking minds to grasping at 
desperate and uncertain remedies. It is open to us, there- 
fore, to demand of those who indulge in these tirades 
against democracy, to state what form of government 
they would have us live under and the steps by which 
they propose to attain to it. 

Sir Henry Maine, from his well-known work on " Ancient 
Institutions," may be set down as a lover of the past, and 
from his high position and experience in British India as 
a believer in benevolent despotism. When, therefore, he 
writes upon " Popular Government " we may expect the 
severest criticism of which the case admits. The fallacy 
which seems to underlie his whole book is the very com- 
mon one that because a limited number of educated men 
are best fitted to understand the principles of government, 
therefore they are more likely to govern for the general' 
benefit. That is hardly the lesson of history. It may 
well be interpreted to show that the greed, the passion, 
the short-sighted selfishness, are just as great among the 
highest as the lowest. 

In arguing that because few persons foresaw the first 
French Revolution therefore Great Britain may be on the 
eve of a similar one, Sir Henry Maine is led into some- 
thing very like enthusiasm for the old French monarchy. 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 19 

From the accession of Hugh Capet to the French Revolution, there 
had been as nearly as possible eight hundred years. During all this 
time the French Royal House had steadily gained in power. It had 
wearied out and beaten back the victorious armies of England. It had 
grown in strength, authority, and splendor till it dazzled all eyes. It 
had become the model of all princes. Nor had its government and its 
relation to its subjects struck all men as they seem to have struck 
Chesterfield. 

If any one regards, to go no further back, the last half 
of the reign of Louis XIV., the Regency, and the reign of 
Louis XV. as models of government, it can only be said 
that judgments differ , It may well be maintained that 
there is little to choose between them and the Reign of 
Terror with the Committee of Public Safety. In fact, the 
one was the direct cause of the other. M. Taine is cer- 
tainly no friend of the Revolution, but any one who will 
read his " Ancien Regime 7> may well feel that the seed of 
the harvest had been sown broadcast in advance. 

Again, Germany for the corresponding eight hundred 
years was under the rule of an aristocracy. Is there a 
more wretched history, as far as the people are concerned, 
anywhere on this side of Asia ? No doubt it produced a 
Goethe and a Beethoven, as Italy in the thirteenth century 
— another instance of the blessings of aristocratic govern- 
ment — produced a Dante and England in the seventeenth 
a Milton. With those who regard such men as an offset 
to infinite and unspeakable misery of the nameless millions 
there can, of course, be no argument. 

Sir Henry, in approving " the greatest happiness of 
the greatest number " as a standard of legislation, says : — 

It is inconceivable that any legislator should deliberately propose, 
or pass, a measure intended to diminish the happiness of the majority 
of the citizens. 

Philip II. of Spain was probably as conscientious a 
legislator as ever lived, which did not prevent him from 
ranking almost with Genghis Khan as a scourge of man- 



20 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

kind. It is not what the legislator intends, but what he 
does, that characterizes his government. Sir Henry pro- 
ceeds : — 

But when this multitudinous majority is called to the government, 
there is no security that this multitude will know what its own hap- 
piness is, or how it can be promoted. 

Perhaps not, but it will make very poor work indeed if 
it does not do as much for its own happiness as is done 
by a Louis XIV. or a Philip II. , or even a Frederic II. or 
a William I of Germany, 

One of the principal charges brought by Sir Henry 
against popular government is this : — 

Experience rather tends to show that it is characterized oy great 
fragility, and that since its appearance all forms of government have 
become more insecure than they were before. . . . The sooer student 
of history will note it as a fact, to be considered in the most serious 
spirit, that since the century during which the Roman emperors were 
at the mercy of the Praetorian soldiery, there has been no such inse- 
curity of government as the world has seen since rulers became dele- 
gates of the community. 

It may be argued that there is something even more 
important than the stability of government, and that is 
its capacity for change without revolution. It is cer- 
tainly not an exaggeration to say that the government of 
France to-day does not differ more from that of Louis 
XIV. than the government of Great Britain does from 
that of George I. But what has it not cost France to 
accomplish the change, while there has been nothing worse 
than a riot on English soil for a century and a half? 
Thirty years ago the United States, from a condition of 
profound peace, was plunged into a tremendous civil 
war. One half of the states was arrayed against the 
other half. A million of men sprang to arms. Generals 
of the first rank worked their way to the front. Congress 
practically abdicated its functions. The Constitution 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 21 

was in abeyance. For four years we lived under a mili- 
tary despotism, almost as complete as that of the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety, though less cruel. 

Yet no sooner was the war closed than all this passed 
away. Congress and the Constitution resumed their 
work ; the army vanished ; the generals disappeared 
into civil life, and within five years it became hardly pos- 
sible to detect any signs of the great struggle. Are there 
many political systems which have shown greater tough- 
ness and elasticity than that ? Probably Sir Henry Maine 
would regard the extension of the suffrage to the negroes 
after the war as the most reckless and dangerous political 
experiment that could be imagined. Yet the result has 
been that though the armed force of the general government 
was in a few years wholly withdrawn, the two races have 
lived side by side, with the exception of a few local riots, 
in perfect peace. The fact that both parties are bidding 
for the negro vote has compelled them not only to concil- 
iate him, but to try to elevate his condition. 1 

One of the critics 2 who at first replied to Sir Henry's 
book thought it necessary to disclaim enthusiasm for pop- 
ular or any other form of government. There need be 
no hesitation in confessing such enthusiasm — not, indeed, 
on the ground imputed by Sir Henry Maine to the advo- 
cates of popular government, a supposed accordance with 
certain inherent rights of man, or with some original and 
imagined state of nature, but simply because from obser- 
vation of what it has already accomplished in its brief 
history, and from what may be held as a fair inference 

1 The efforts of the whites to defeat and suppress the negro vote with- 
out attempting an educational qualification, and the increasing outbreaks 
of violence between the races, may fairly be charged to the weakness of 
the state governments, as hereinafter portrayed, unable to preserve 
order and enforce justice between classes. The explanation is fully 
adequate without resorting to a wholesale condemnation of negro suffrage. 

2 E. L. Godkin, in The Nineteenth Century, February, 1886. 



1 

i 



22 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

from the past to the future, it seems to promise more of 
happiness for mankind than any other which the world 
has known. 

In fact, Sir Henry Maine has fallen into certain incon- 
sistencies, which would be surprising in such a writer, 
were it not apparent how strongly his judgment is influ- 
enced by fear and dislike. In stating his reason for the 
title of his work, he says, on page 67: — 

What we are witnessing in West European politics is not so much 
the establishment of a definite system as the continuance, at varying 
rates, of a process. The states of Europe are now regulated by politi- 
cal institutions answering to the various stages of the transition from 
the old view that rulers are presumably wise and good, the rightful 
rulers and guides of the whole population, to the newer view that the 
ruler is the agent and servant, and the subject the wise and good 
master, who is obliged to delegate his power to the so-called ruler 
because, being a multitude, he cannot use it himself. 

Now this is clearly the statement of a principle of gov- 
ernment, which may be applied to an unlimited rule like 
that of Louis Napoleon, to a constitutional monarchy like 
Great Britain, or to a pure republic like the United States, 
and as a principle it is a legitimate cause of strong feeling 
or aversion. On page 57, however, all this is changed. 
There we read that — 

Democracy is simply and solely a form of government. 

And on page 64 — 

On the whole the dispassionate student of politics, who has once 
got into his head that Democracy is only a form of government, has a 
right to be somewhat surprised at the feelings which the advent of 
Democracy excites. 

The principle of Democracy is that the people choose 
their rulers instead of being governed by those as to 
whom they have no choice. To whom and how they 
shall delegate power is what makes the form ; the discus- 
sion of which is the object of the present work. 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 23 

Again Sir Henry starts with arguing that popular gov- 
ernment is unstable and fragile in character, and that 

Irreconcilables are tending constantly to pull it to pieces ; 

and yet that a wide suffrage 

will in the long run produce a mischievous form of conservatism, and 
drug society with a potion, compared with which Eldonine would 
be a salutary draught. 

In other words, popular government is to change con- 
stantly till it has destroyed existing institutions, and after 
that it will not change at all ; decidedly not a cheerful 
view of affairs. The most surprising result of this reason- 
ing is to assume 

that the process of stamping upon the law the average opinion of an 
entire community is directed to an identical end with that of the 
Roman Catholic Church, which attributes a similar sacredness to the 
average opinions of the Christian world. 

In other words, a consensus of opinion arrived at 
through a free press and free public discussion is identical 
with that produced by a hierarchy which has steadily, and 
in a great degree successfully, suppressed free thought 
and imposed upon mankind the dicta of an infallible pope 
and a Jesuit college. The peaceful uniformity of life in 
Great Britain and the United States, and the equality of 
France, are of the same kind that was brought about by 
the Inquisition in Spain under Philip II. 

Page 13: — 

The principle of popular government was thus affirmed less than 
two centuries ago, and the practical application of that principle out- 
side these islands and their dependencies is not quite a century old. 

Per contra. 

There had been more than two thousand years of tolerably well- 
ascertained political history, and at its outset Monarchy, Aristocracy, 
and Democracy were all plainly discernible. The result of a long ex- 
perience was that some monarchies and some aristocracies had shown 



24 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

themselves extremely tenacious of life. But the democracies which 
had arisen and perished seemed to show that this form of government 
was of rare occurrence in political history, and was characterized by 
an extreme fragility. 

Here, by his own showing, are two wholly distinct 
things. Popular government is to be judged only by its 
own experience, and in applying to it the tests of earlier 
history Sir Henry seems to be as illogical as are, in his 
view, Rousseau and Bentham. And when he adds, what 
is perhaps true, that, " of all forms of government Democ- 
racy is by far the most difficult," it seems as if a little 
charity towards partial failures would not be out of 
place. 

Quitting now the ground of abstract and a 'priori argu- 
ment, we will inquire what has been the practical result of 
popular government so far as it can be learned from a 
century of experience. At the outset it must be repeated, 
that with those who regard an upper class, limited in 
numbers but wealthy, cultured, and ornamental, placed 
securely beyond want and devoted to elegant leisure, as 
an offset to the unknown and uncared-for millions, who 
are left to live and perish like the beasts of the field, it is 
difficult to argue. The British House of Lords is no 
doubt a dignified and venerable institution, but if the 
average permanent welfare of the whole population of 
Great Britain could thereby be raised in even a small frac- 
tional degree, it might be permitted to regard the aboli- 
tion of the House of Lords as a desirable event. Almost 
all accounts agree that social life among the higher classes 
in France before the first revolution was perhaps the 
most delightful in its charm which the world has ever 
seen. But if it involved the condition of the remainder 
of the population, its claim to existence could not, from 
the present point of view, stand for a moment. Every- 
body knows Burke's picture of a beautiful, virtuous, and 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 25 

innocent queen falling a victim to the mob. Even if we 
admit this favorable view of her character, she suffered, 
and with as much justice as a great many other virtuous 
and innocent women have suffered, for the sins of her 
race and class. In this discussion we shall have to as- 
same as the objective point "the greatest good of the 
greatest number, " or rather the greatest average welfare 
of the whole, subject, no doubt, to demonstration of what 
that greatest good may really be. 

Appealing then to history, 1 we will begin with Great 
Britain. Blackstone, writing in the last century, stated 
that there were 160 offences liable under the law to capital 
punishment, 2 and even in the first years of this century 
petty offences, such as sheep-stealing and the like, were 
punished with death, while executions were conducted by 
wholesale, under the most revolting and demoralizing cir- 

1 And in France that very equality which is by us so impetuously 
decried, while it has by no means improved (it is said) the upper classes 
of French society, has undoubtedly given to the lower classes, to the body 
of the common people, a self-respect, an enlargement of spirit, a con- 
sciousness of counting for something in their country's action, which has 
raised them in the scale of humanity. 

To treat men as if they were better is the way to make them better. — 
Matthew Arnold, "Essay on Equality." 

2 Legislators had endeavored to protect property by punishing with 
death those who stole a sum of money which in their time was considera- 
ble, and the penalty was retained when the change in the value of money 
had made that sum insignificant. . . . Previous to the Revolution the 
number of capital offences in the statute book is said not to have ex- 
ceeded 50. During the reign of George II. 63 new ones were added. 
In 1770 the number was estimated in Parliament at 154, but by Black- 
stone at 160 ; and Romilly, in a pamphlet which he wrote in 1786, observed 
that in the sixteen years since the appearance of Blackstone's " Commen- 
taries" it had considerably increased. . . . 467 persons were executed in 
London and Middlesex alone in the twelve years from December, 1771, 
to December, 1783. In 1778 not less than 96 persons were hanged at 
the Old Bailey. On the other hand, in the great city of Amsterdam, 
which was about a third of the size of London, Howard found that in the 
eight years before his arrival only 5 persons had been executed. — 
Lecky, "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," Vol. VI., 
Chap. XXni. 



26 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

cumstances of publicity. To-day, treason and murder are 
the only crimes so punished, and those under conditions 
of privacy which prevent them from becoming a public 
scandal. Between 1840 and 1853 the punishment of trans- 
portation was also done away with and prison discipline 
immensely improved. Up to 1838 poor debtors languished 
in prison amid dreadful scenes of misery and injustice, 
till a bankrupt law in 1843 came to alleviate the condition 
of the less fortunate class of mankind. Among the first 
measures of the reformed Parliament of 1832 was the 
voting of one hundred millions of dollars to buy out 
slavery in Jamaica, which was shortly after followed by 
its abolition throughout the British dominions and the 
most earnest efforts for the suppression of the slave trade ; 
and also the first law for limiting the hours of labor in 
factories, especially for children. Before 1832 the poor 
laws, based upon the statutes of Elizabeth, of William and 
Mary, and the 9th of George I., had produced a state of 
things which to the present generation seems wholly in- 
credible. In 1834 was passed the new poor law, the 
benefits of which have amounted to a social revolution. 
From 1837 to 1839 was worked out the change of the postal 
system from the old complicated and burdensome rates, 
with the abuse of the franking privilege, to the uniform 
penny rate. Those now living who wish to form some 
idea of the resultant benefit should read the memoirs of 
Sir Rowland Hill. 

In 1843 Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, 
brought up in Parliament the subject of education, and 
showed that besides children educated at the cost of 
individuals, societies, and churches, there were still 1,014,- 
193 children capable of instruction but receiving none, 
and that, while in Lancaster alone the punishment of 
crime cost £ 604,965, the annual vote for education for 
all England was only £ 30,000. In a publication of a 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 27 

time now past 1 it is stated that the number of scholars in 
England and Wales was — 

1818 1833 1851 

477,225 1,548,890 2,407,642 

and the proportion to population — 

1 in 17.25 1 in 11.27 1 in 8.36 

In 1870 was passed Mr. Forster's Education Act, as a 
consequence of which there were in 1889, in the public 
primary schools of England, Scotland, and Wales, 3,682,625 
children, or one in ten of the population, exclusive of vol- 
untary private, church, and advanced schools, of which the 
statistics are not given. 

In 1833 a parliamentary grant of £20,000 was for the first time 
made in England to assist two societies engaged in popular education. 
In 1838 the parliamentary grant was raised to £30,000 a year. In 
1892 the total expenditure of school boards in England and Wales 
amounted to the enormous sum of £7,134,386. The number of free 
scholars was about 3,800,000 and the number of children paying fees 
or partial fees was about 1, 120,000. 2 

In the reformed Parliament of 1832 a proposal for a bal- 
lot Act was introduced by Lord Gray, but rejected by a 
vote of 211 to 206. The object was to replace, by secret 
ballot, the open voting in which the vote of every tenant 
and laborer was known to his landlord or employer. 
After discussion at intervals this reform was finally 
carried in 1872. 

No greater change has taken place than in the freedom 
of the press and of public discussion. As a sample of the 
past, take the following : — 

In Scotland, in May, 1794 — the Habeas Corpus Act then suspended 
— Mr. Thomas Muir, a barrister, and Mr. Palmer, a Unitarian minis- 
ter of Dundee, were by Scotch law found guilty of sedition. The 
gravest charge against the former was that he had lent a copy of 

1 " England under Queen Victoria," by Edward H. Michelson, 1854. 

2 Lecky, "Democracy and Liberty, 1 ' Vol. L, Chap. III., p. 262. 



28 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Paine's "Rights of Man" to some one who begged it from him to 
read. For this Mr. Muir was sentenced to fourteen years' transporta- 
tion. Mr. Palmer was charged with publishing a seditious address, 
— that is, an address for reform — and was sentenced for seven years. 

Mr. Skirving, Mr. Margarot, and Mr. Gerald, who 
appear to have been three respectable and respected work- 
men, were charged with belonging to a society for obtain- 
ing annual parliaments and a wide suffrage. They were 
sentenced to fourteen years' transportation and immedi- 
ately shipped to Botany Bay. 1 

The history of the newspaper press is nearly coeval with 
that of the London Times, which first appeared on the 1st 
of January, 1788. 2 All manner of attempts were made to 
place bounds to the press, beyond which it should not pass. 
First, the tax on newspapers was a penny. In 1765 it 
was three halfpence ; in 1789 twopence; in 1795 two- 
pence halfpenny ; in 1802 threepence halfpenny, and in 
1815 fourpence. Imagine at this day a tax of eight cents 
on every copy of a newspaper! Besides which, so late as 
1831, there was a duty on paper of threepence per pound 
weight and a duty on advertisements. In 1836 the stamp 
duty was reduced to a penny, and the year 1860 witnessed 
the total abolition of the taxes upon knowledge. In 1836 
the number of newspapers rose from 397 to 458. In 
1831 the circulation of newspapers was 38,648,314. In 
1854, the last year of the Stamp Act, it was 120,000,000. 
Since then there are no statistics, but there is an estimate 
for the United Kingdom in 1864 of 546,059,400, and in 
1870 of 700,000,000, while the subsequent increase must of 
course have been very great. The freedom of the press may 
bring with it abuses, but only the most determined reac- 
tionist can deny the enormous preponderance of advantage. 

With the freedom of the press came the practice of par- 
liamentary reporting. In 1728 no report. In 1771 and 

1 "Popular Progress in England," by James Koutledge, p. 202. 

2 Ibid., p. 501. 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 29 

1772, after a struggle with the publishers, the right of re- 
porting was established, but only after 1832 began the 
system which, not only in the London but the provincial 
newspapers, places the doings of Parliament before every 
household in the land. 

Of all the instances of changes of legislation from the 
benefit of the few to that of the many, there is perhaps none 
equal to that of the corn laws. After the peace of 1815, 
and the cessation of the war demand for grain, the prices 
fell so as to cause great disaster to the landed interest 
and, avowedly for the protection of that interest, heavy 
duties were placed upon foreign grain. Allusion here can 
only be made to the memorable struggle by which all 
taxes were removed from the food of the people, and 
Great Britain has, through good and evil report, and in 
spite of provocation from other countries, steadfastly ad- 
hered to that freedom of trade, which, whatever else may 
be said of it, is distinctly in the interest of the poor. 

Of the many events which make up the glory of popular 
government in Great Britain can here be cited only a few. 
In 1861-62 civil war broke out in the United States. The 
sympathy of the upper classes in Great Britain, almost to 
a man, including even those of such mental qualities as 
Mr. Gladstone, was on the side of the South. If Great 
Britain had been governed as she was fifty years before, 
she would beyond question have interfered on that side, 
with such disastrous results as the imagination can hardly 
compass. Fortunately it was not so. It was the workmen 
of Lancashire, suffering as they were from the privation of 
cotton, and under the leadership of men like John Bright ; 
it was the popular press, speaking with the voice of the 
multitude, which notified the government to forbear, and 
thus with the treaty which awarded the indemnity for the 
Alabama claims, established precedents of unspeakable 
value for mankind. 



30 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In 1870 was effected that reform of the civil service, 
the results of which have excited such unqualified admi- 
ration from foreign observers. 1 

Up to 1868 the House of Commons decided disputed 
cases of elections by its own vote, and of course in most, 
if not all, cases from the point of view of party. In that 
year, by an act of sacrifice perhaps without parallel in a 
public body and which shows the power of responsibility 
to public opinion, the House surrendered its right of 
decision, to be thenceforth exercised by the courts, and 
this, with the Ballot Act of 1872 and the Corrupt Practices 
Act of 1882, has gone far to bring about a purity and 
decency in the elections, to appreciate which one should 
read the history of what elections were fifty years ago. 
In 1869 was righted a great wrong of nearly three centu- 
ries' standing in the disestablishment of the Irish Church, 
and that not by violent and revolutionary methods but 
with due regard to the vested interests of clergymen 
actually in possession. Opinions may differ as to Home 
Rule in Ireland, but that which remains beyond praise is 
the patience and forbearance with which the English press 
and people have witnessed the absorption of the time of 
Parliament in seemingly endless discussion and experiment, 
combined with obstruction by the Irish members. The 
discussion of finance will come later. 

The last example to be here considered is the govern- 
ment of India. That there are grave abuses in the despotic 
government of three hundred millions of subject and alien 
races, thousands of miles distant, is a matter of course, but 
taking the period from the transfer after 1857 to the 
direct government of the crown, the history of the world 
offers no such example of bringing the conscience of a 
nation to bear upon executive administration at such a 
distance from home. 

1 See post, Chap. XIX. 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 31 

Much space has been given to the experience of Great 
Britain, because it is there that the best results of popular 
government have been worked out. Why they have been 
so is one of the most interesting problems in the whole 
range of political science. 

Certainly one cannot point to the same definite and 
steady progress in France, yet if we compare the present 
state of things with that of 1789 the total advance is 
almost as great. There is, perhaps, no period in European 
history which has excited more horror and disgust than 
that of France between 1789 and 1800. Yet it may be 
doubted whether the suffering caused by it was any 
greater than that resulting from the wars of Louis XIV., 
and the expulsion of the Protestants under the Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. If we consider that by that 
process the very flower of the population, moral if not 
intellectual, was driven out of the country under the most 
distressing circumstances, to take rank among the most 
valuable elements in other countries; that through the 
government by intendants centralized in Paris, which was 
established from the time of Richelieu during the reign of 
Louis XIV., all experience and knowledge of self-govern- 
ment and self-dependence were taken out not merely from 
the masses of the people but from the upper classes as 
well ; that almost all taxation both for Church and State 
was raised directly from the poor, while the nobility not 
only enjoyed total exemption in this respect but all privi- 
leges of office and emolument, fulfilling at the same time 
no political duties in return ; that the Church, allowing 
for the undoubted merits of many of its members and 
orders, did as a whole maintain in the people a condition 
of ignorance and superstition, — we may fairly assume that 
the disorders of the Revolution were at least as much 
attributable to the royal government which preceded it as 
to the sudden and unrestrained advent of democracy. 



32 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

We shall have occasion hereafter to trace the growth 
under adverse circumstances of the principle of popular 
government in France. At present reference will be 
made only to one of the results which it has achieved. 
In the year 1871 something like one -third of the depart- 
ments was occupied by a foreign army. Paris, besieged, 
was on the brink of starvation. All regular government 
was at an end almost as much as in 1789. The practically 
self-constituted Committee of National Defence, repre- 
sented by M. Jules Favre, proposed to Count Bismarck to 
have an assembly elected to settle the terms of peace. 
The Count pronounced it impossible, and it seemed so, 
but it was done. An armistice was declared on the 28th 
of January. On the 8th of February the Assembly met 
at Bordeaux. Terms of peace were agreed upon, the 
indemnity paid, the enemy negotiated out of the country, 
and the Third Republic entered upon a period, peaceful 
externally and internally, which has lasted for twenty- 
eight years. Will not the result of this centuiy's work 
bear comparison with those of the last ? 

In Spain we need go no farther back than the half -savage 
and barbarous condition of the people at the time of the 
conflict which the Duke of Wellington maintained against 
the French. It would not be difficult to show that this 
condition was the direct fruit of the misgovernment of 
three centuries preceding. Following this, from 1814 to 
1833, came the reign of Ferdinand VII., which will hardly 
be cited as an instance of the beneficence of royal rule. 
Take in contrast with these things the period since 1870, 
the high-toned if abortive government of Amadeo, the 
republic under Castelar, the accession of Alphonso XII., 
the expression of national feeling at his death, the regency 
of Maria Christina, the progress of parliamentary govern- 
ment, the changes of ministry in response to the vote of 
the legislature, the discipline of surrendering power with- 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 33 

out forcible resistance ; and then study in connection 
with these things the changed circumstances of the 
people. It may be denied that these results are caused 
by the extension of popular power, but it cannot be that 
they are at least contemporaneous with it. 

As regards Italy, it can hardly be expected that a 
county, of which till 1860 Naples and Sicily were under 
Bourbon despotism and Tuscany under the paternal but 
emasculating rule of the grand dukes ; of which Vene- 
tia, Lombardy, and the duchies were under Austrian 
domination till 1866 ; and of which till 1870 the States 
of the Church enjoyed the blessings of the temporal 
dominion of the Pope, should at once have developed a 
full capacity for self-government. Not in the history of 
mankind is there a more dramatic series of events than 
those through which Cavour and Victor Emmanuel led 
the way to a united Italy. The dark sides of the change 
are the eager acceptance of the militarism which is crush- 
ing Europe ; disorder in the finances, with grossly unequal 
taxation, as a result of this and over-ambition in the 
line of governmental action; the disasters in Florence, 
Rome, Naples, and Milan from the invasion of the modern 
spirit of speculative money-making ; and the enormous 
emigration which seeks relief from misery at home. We 
shall have to wait awhile before parliamentary govern- 
ment with a wide suffrage shall fully show what it can 
accomplish, but those who have followed what has already 
been attained among this very practical people by free dis- 
cussion under responsible ministers will look with con- 
fidence to the future. 

Of the German Empire a believer in popular govern- 
ment dares not trust himself to speak beyond saying that, 
notwithstanding the recent introduction of universal suf- 
frage, it is almost as much under military and imperial 
despotism as three centuries ago ; and that it may be 



34 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

doubted whether any democracy ever made a graver 
blunder, or one to be expiated by the sufferings of 
greater multitudes of human beings, than the forcible 
separation from France of Alsace and Lorraine. 

Let us cross the Atlantic again. It cannot be said that 
Central and South America have shown a very edifying 
record in the last half-century. But it may be argued 
that they have been quite as well off as under the old 
Spanish rule, which rule, indeed, left the people so igno- 
rant and brutal and barbarous that it seemed impossible 
that they could recover at all. And yet Mexico has 
shown distinct signs of progress in the last twenty years, 
while in Chili, which has been for many years a fair ex- 
ample of a well-governed state, the adventurer who tried 
to overthrow her institutions perished miserably and the 
cause of constitutional liberty triumphed. 

And what of those great commonwealths which are 
growing up in the Pacific Ocean — Australia, Tasmania, 
and New Zealand? or those like the Cape Colony and 
Natal in the southern seas? They have no standing 
armies, no aristocracy or royalty by divine right of birth, 
but with a free press, free public discussion, and public 
schools, and the equality of all men before the law, are 
pursuing the arts of peace, including, we may concede, the 
acquisition of wealth. Is the average of happiness and well- 
being less there than in the peoples of continental Europe ? 

There remains last the consideration of our own coun- 
try. It may be freely admitted that in matters of govern- 
ment, as apart from material wealth and prosperity and 
the achievements of physical science, we have not made 
as much progress as some other countries. One reason 
is that we began at a point so relatively high that a pro- 
portionate improvement was not to be expected, especially 
when it was encumbered during the first half-century 
with the conflict with slaverv and since then with the tide 



ii SOME CRITICISMS OF DEMOCRACY 35 

of promiscuous foreign immigration. One fact, however, 
stands forth in a rugged strength which is able to bear 
up any imposed burden of shortcomings. When the 
Civil War broke out the government was almost as com- 
pletely paralyzed as that of France in the War of 1870. 
The executive power had been for some years in the hands 
of the partisans of the South. Congress was almost as 
helpless as a street mob. The first battle of Bull Run 
pointed to a lost cause. The feeling of foreign countries, 
especially the upper classes, was almost unanimous in 
favor of the South and against the North. In all our 
great cities, at all events of the East, opinion was almost 
equally divided, and it was especially the men of wealth 
and culture who, through the war, inclined to the idea 
that the struggle was hopeless and we had better give it 
up. But there was one voice which, from the firing on 
Sumter to the final surrender of Richmond, never faltered 
nor wavered. It was that of the millions of the common 
people throughout the Northern states, declaring that, 
whatever it might cost in men or money, the Union must 
be maintained. It cannot be said that the war developed 
much strength in poetry. But there is one line which in 
the intensity of its meaning has seldom been surpassed. 
It is in response to a call for troops. 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more. 

Was it an accident or a special dispensation of Provi- 
dence that in such a crisis a man like Abraham Lincoln 
sat in the presidential chair? or that from a nation as 
little military as any in the world, and whose civilian gen- 
erals were at first the mockery of nations, there came 
forth within four years men like Grant and Sherman and 
Sheridan and Thomas ? But the crowning glory was still 
to come. In the words of a writer already quoted, speak- 
ing of modern wars : — 



36 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 11 

The Americans of the North alone showed that civilized men may 
some day fight without resorting to the rules of barbarians; and 
when the war was over the same men did what perhaps no nation 
ever did before after a mortal struggle : they forebore to take away 
the life even of the leading rebel. 1 

Probably no victorious army in the world ever com- 
mitted so little outrage upon property and life, and espe- 
cially in the treatment of women. And when the work 
was done, when, with not a dollar of indemnity demanded, 
not an acre of land confiscated, not one life lost by pro- 
scription, the vast armies melted into the employments of 
peace, the hand of friendship was promptly extended by 
the people, if not by the government. Hardly a genera- 
tion has passed, and scarcely a trace of bitterness remains. 
The Southern man at the North, the Northern man at the 
South, is received with cordiality and listened to with 
respect, while the vanquished, for the most part, are ready 
to admit that the result of the conflict was almost as much 
a gain for them as for the victors. The only rivalry now 
is in material progress, which, however it may be derided 
or denounced, is better than the thirst for revenge on one 
side, and the fear of it on the other, which would keep a 
million of men permanently under arms. A firm convic- 
tion is justified that the spirit which did these things is 
just as available to-day for the victories of peace as it 
then was for those of war, that it can be made use of for 
reforms which would immensely increase the purity and 
efficiency of government, in the nation, the states, and the 
cities. Why it is not, and how it may be so made use of, 
it is the object of this book to examine. 

1 "Popular Progress in England/ 1 p. 541. 



CHAPTER III 

ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 

/^\NE thing may be said of universal, or adult manhood, 
^-^ suffrage, that whereas the whole world seems to be 
tending towards it, no step backward has taken place ex- 
cept through armed force. In this country, at all events, 
it may be predicted with confidence that, while restrictions 
as to education or length of residence may be required, no 
considerable pecuniary qualifications for voting will ever 
be enforced unless as a result of fierce civil wars. In fact, 
such a thing seems to imply a contradiction in terms. It 
is charged that the poor and ignorant multitude vote away 
the property of the rich, or, what is perhaps worse, vote for 
bad and corrupt men for office. By what process is this 
multitude to be induced to vote away its power of doing 
so ? It seems to be the part of wisdom, therefore, instead 
of denouncing a wide suffrage as an evil on general prin- 
ciples, to study it scientifically like any other social or 
physical problem. Further than this, even if we admit all 
of evil that can be said of it, if this evil is inevitable it 
seems better, in place of helpless lamentation, to see whether 
anything, and what, can be done to mitigate it and obtain 
whatever of good the institution contains with the mini- 
mum of detriment. 

Votes of men are worth counting, since men's instincts, where 
these can be deciphered, are wise and human, and well deserve 
attending to. 1 

1 Carlyle, " Latter-day Pamphlets," chapter on Parliaments. 
37 



38 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In all cases of applied mechanics, the first requisite is to 
investigate the nature of the force to be employed. Water 
power requires one kind of machinery, steam power another, 
and electricity a third. A man would be thought foolish 
who should set up steam machinery to be worked by the 
force of water, or electric apparatus expecting to run it 
with steam. Again, all natural forces require mechanical 
contrivances of some kind. A small stream in New Eng- 
land often furnishes the working power for considerable 
mills, while the mighty force of Niagara, as far as any 
mechanical purpose is concerned, has till recently flowed 
uselessly to waste. 1 Public opinion is an immense force, 
and so is steam, but it would be idle to build a fire under 
a kettle and raise a cloud of steam to dissipate itself in 
the air. That any useful result may be obtained, a cylin- 
der and a piston rod with appropriate gearing are in- 
dispensably necessary. The present contention is, that, 
so far as popular government has failed, the main cause 
has been in defective machinery, so that public opinion is 
brought to bear either not at all or so imperfectly that what 
is assumed to be the will of the people is in fact only that 
of a comparatively small number of political managers, 
more or less dishonest, who avail themselves of the forms 
of government to carry out their private schemes and pur- 
poses, by virtue of a nominal expression of the popular 
will. 

What are the elements of this force which we call pub- 
lic opinion? There is a mass of individuals from a few 
thousands in the smaller cities up to more than seventy 
millions of the nation. The extremes are represented by 
the highest degree of intellectual and moral culture, and 
the lowest of mental and physical abasement. The num- 
bers of either, however, are comparatively small. Even 

1 Of course, for the purpose of this illustration, aesthetic considerations 
may be left out of the account. 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 39 

in East London recent investigations have led to the state- 
ment that the criminal and degraded classes form really 
but a small percentage, the great mass consisting of self- 
supporting work- and trades-people. The multitude be- 
tween the extremes is made up of persons who, as Macaulay 
said, are neither very good nor very bad. They lead for 
the most part narrow and busy lives, absorbed in procuring 
support for themselves and their families, and having very 
little time for thought or sympathy outside of the charmed 
circle of their personal interests. Perhaps the best, as well 
as the largest, fraction consists of those who are under the 
pressure of constant strain to provide for others near and 
dear to them. Statisticians tell us that less than five per 
cent of the population are placed beyond the need of daily 
exertion. It may be doubted whether more than five per 
cent of these regard their wealth as anything but a means 
of ministering to their own personal gratification, or see 
in it any more obligation to public spirit, or patriotism, 
or self-sacrifice, than the mass below them. Of course 
the mainspring which moves the whole multitude, with 
a few rare exceptions, is self-interest as they understand 
it, and it is perhaps well for the world that it is so, as 
it would be impossible for men to act together at all 
unless there was some principle or motive common to 
all, upon which they can rely with confidence. No doubt 
this idea of self-interest, often grievously misunderstood, 
leads men to do wrong and unwise things, but is it too 
much to assume that, so far as they can understand it, 
the great majority of men prefer good to evil? Pure 
depravity is very rare. For example, there are thou- 
sands of railway trains rushing about the country at 
night at from twenty to fifty miles an hour. Nothing 
could be easier, without the smallest risk of detection, than 
to place obstructions upon the track, yet such a thing is 
almost absolutely unknown. The " spoils system " of 



40 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

office-seeking has been one of our greatest political evils, 
not yet by any means eradicated, yet it does not imply 
a want of moral purpose in the people. The proportion 
of the people who ever expect office, or think of obtaining 
it, is very small. The political use of offices is extremely 
offensive in its details, and distinctly contrary to the 
interest of the great mass of the people. Probably no- 
body would charge that the mass of the people deliber- 
ately and consciously support that system. The trouble 
is either that they do not understand the nature and effect 
of the evil, or else that they do not know how, or will not 
exert themselves sufficiently, to apply the remedy. The 
problem to be solved, therefore, with regard to this and 
all other political questions is, first, how they can be pre- 
sented so that the great multitude, with the minimum of 
time and attention which they can afford to give, can be 
made to understand them, and then how such, even lim- 
ited, exertion as they can be induced to make on behalf of 
these questions can be so guided as to produce the most 
immediate, potent, and visible effects. 

Now after self-interest there are two motive forces com- 
mon to almost all humanity. The first is moral enthusi- 
asm. There are very few persons who are not stirred 
with more or less of emotion on hearing of some act of 
heroic self-sacrifice or disinterested virtue. A fireman 
who saves a woman or child at the risk of his own life, a 
bankrupt who voluntarily surrenders all his property for 
the benefit of his creditors, or who after years of toil and 
self-denial calls his old creditors together and pays them 
principal and interest, a statesman who sacrifices an obvi- 
ous personal advantage for the sake of a principle, never 
fails to call forth admiration. What an immense force 
was the love of and devotion to the Union in our Civil 
War ! Witness also the religious enthusiasms which have 
so often swept over the world. Political questions, there- 



in OKGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 41 

fore, should be presented to the multitude, not from the 
political or even the economic side, but always, so far as 
possible, from the moral side ; not from the point of view 
of expediency, for which those not directly or immediately 
interested care very little, but from that of right and jus- 
tice, which appeal more or less powerfully to all. 

The second of these forces, which is closely connected 
with the first, is personal enthusiasm. The greatest 
achievements of masses of men have always been made 
under some loved and trusted leader. Witness the names 
of Christ and Mohammed ; or, on a smaller scale, William 
Pitt and Sir Robert Peel, Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, 
Napoleon, Bismarck, and Von Moltke, Washington, Lin- 
coln, and Grant. What forces in the world have been the 
names of Luther, Calvin, and Ignatius Loyola, Whitfield 
and Wesley, with the hosts of lesser men who have been 
the movers of their own age and country ! Personality 
is, therefore, the most powerful agency for working upon 
masses of men. If, on the other hand, power is placed in 
the hands of committees or conventions or bodies of men, 
even though elected by and supposed to be representative 
of the people, their action may or may not be good in 
itself, but it will soon cease to express or respond to the 
will of the people at large. The reason is, that the peo- 
ple are then asked to judge of the character of measures, 
both as to the desirableness of the ends proposed and as 
to the fitness of the measures for obtaining those ends, and 
are expected to contribute by election one out of a consid- 
erable number of units, sufficient to make up a majority of 
the whole body to secure the passage of those measures. 
Added to which is the fact that in every election a greater 
or less number of measures is involved, which may appear 
of differing importance to different sections of the people, 
and as to the advantages or disadvantages of which there 
may be almost as many different opinions as there are 



42 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

individuals. It is no reproach to the mass of the people 
to say that they have neither time nor inclination nor 
capacity for the solution of such problems, and it may 
safely be asserted that, as regards the last two qualities, 
the wealthy and cultured classes are but little better off 
than the multitude who are compelled to daily exertion for 
existence. Under this system there are wanting also the 
two great forces which have been mentioned, — the moral 
and the personal. It is very rare that political or social 
questions take such a form of positive right and wrong as 
to excite a powerful common feeling among masses of men 
and women. That was the case with slavery and to a cer- 
tain extent with the question of dissolving the Union, but 
it is so to a very limited extent with questions of finance 
and administration. Even where this element does enter 
to a considerable extent, as in the question of limiting the 
sale of liquor, and in the protection of labor, especially of 
women and children, against what is known as the sweat- 
ing system, it by no means follows that the most powerful 
public sentiment will be followed by effectual remedial 
measures, and in fact those which seem most obviously 
suited to the purpose are often found to cause more evil 
than they remove. 

In the case of an individual, however, high character 
and intellectual ability are much more discernible by, and 
suited to produce a common agreement in, the multi- 
tude. The mass of the people are in almost all cases un- 
able to understand and agree upon measures. They are 
very quick to recognize integrity and purity of character 
in men, and to a certain, though perhaps not the same, ex- 
tent, the qualities of intellect and judgment. They are 
quite willing to leave to such a man the power of decision 
as to measures, which, as they are prepared to admit, 
they do not and will not take the trouble to understand. 
In this way also can be combined enthusiasm for men with 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 43 

enthusiasm for measures; the force of those who aim to 
secure definite political reforms with the force of thosa 
who can appreciate only the character of the agent through 
whom those reforms are to be brought about. 

The obvious objection at once presents itself/ that so 
much power in one man is liable to abuse and leads to 
despotism, of which the world has had so many fearful 
examples. The first step to be aimed at in popular gov^_ — fe 
ernment, therefore, is to guard against such abuse by pro- 
viding a representative body to watch over and control 
the executive, and the whole history of modern represent- 
ative government turns upon the relation between these 
two branches, known as the executive and the legislative. 
Up to a century ago the world had had abundant experi- 
ence, in all their forms, of the evils of despotism by a single 
man, and also by a self-constituted aristocracy. What it 
had yet to learn was that the danger from a popularly 
elected legislature is just as great, from the unfailing ten- 
dency of such a body to displace the executive and assume 
all power for itself. Modern political history may be said 
to consist in the struggle to limit the executive power 
without destroying it. For the destruction of executive 
power means anarchy, and anarchy, where there is any- \ 
thing like density of population, means a swift and sure 
return to despotism. 

Of the three branches into which government, according 
to the modern view, is divided, the executive is the only 
one which is absolutely essential. "Armies," said Macau- 
lay, " have been victorious under bad generals. No army 
was ever victorious under a debating club." In like 
manner governments have been fairly well conducted 
where the executive, legislative, and judicial powers were 
all represented by one man. No government has ever 
been permanently able to maintain itself where a numerous 
legislature has taken upon itself directly the work of ad- 



44 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

ministration. It is a very simple proposition that a peo- 
ple cannot govern themselves. No matter how great may- 
be their virtue or intelligence or education, it is impossible 
for millions of units to agree upon complex details of 
policy or administration. Baffled at every turn, they be- 
come discouraged and apathetic and at length seek protec- 
tion in the strong hand from insult and plunder. 

A moment's divergence may be allowed upon the sub- 
ject of popular education. By one party it is regarded as 
the basis and the sheet anchor of popular government, 
while another party sneers at it as a broken reed. Cer- 
tainly too much cannot be said on behalf of educating the 
people. In its most moderate form it converts an animal 
into a thinking being. With it come the first ideas of 
thrift and denial of present gratification for future advan- 
tage, the first conception of public, if not private, duty as 
apart from personal interest; but that it is of no avail in 
producing that agreement as to details and that concert of 
action which are essential to the conduct of government, is 
shown by the fact that the most highly educated men dis- 
agree among themselves, and are discordant in action, just 
as much as the most ignorant of artisans and laborers. 

It is not at first sight so obvious, while it is yet per- 
fectly true, that a legislature is almost as incompetent to 
govern as a people. Its members have a much more pres- 
ent sense of their private interests, and those of the local 
constituencies, than of the interests of the whole people. 
They have a keen jealousy of any attempt at preeminence 
in any one or any part of their number, where all stand 
on an equal footing. The temptation, on the other hand, 
to self-assertion unaccompanied by responsibility is very 
great, and apart from these things, honest difference of 
opinion is enough to paralyze action. The intriguer again 
finds his opportunity; what was at first only helplessness 
becomes corruption, and the people, disgusted with their 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 45 

representatives, are only too ready to listen to any advent- 
urer who has a genius for organizing strong administra- 
tion. 

If the people are unable directly to govern themselves, 
it is equally true that they do not wish to govern. They 
very much prefer to attend to their private affairs and to 
have their governing done for them. A legislature, on 
the other hand, distinctly does wish to govern. To use 
the words of the late Mr. Bagehot : — 

A legislative chamber is greedy and covetous ; it acquires as much, 
it concedes as little as possible. The passions of its members are its 
rulers ; the lawmaking faculty, the most comprehensive of the impe- 
rial faculties, is its instrument ; it will take the administration, if it 
can take it. 1 

Though the danger is less obvious, encroachment by the! 
legislature upon the executive is just as certain to be at- 
tempted as the contrary. If in this battle the executive 
wins, government is possible, though it may be bad; if 
the legislature wins, government becomes, in the long run, 
impossible.^ Popular government, therefore, if it is to 
justify its existence in the world, will have not merely to 
do that at which it has hitherto chiefly aimed, the provid- 
ing an effective control of the executive power, but the 
still more difficult task, which has hardly received any 
attention at all, that of taking security against the ambi- 
tion of legislatures. 

The first settlers in what is now the United States, 
whether Puritans in New England, Quakers in Pennsyl- 
vania, or Huguenots in Georgia, were, for the most part, 
fleeing from the tyranny of kings and princes. Their first 
object was to secure themselves against a repetition of 
it, and they thought to do this by placing power in the 
hands of a body of representatives chosen from among 
themselves. They did not and could not foresee the dan- 

1 Bagehot, "English Constitution," No. 1, The Cabinet. 



46 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

gers involved in this course also, as in fact for the first 
century and a half these dangers did not make themselves 
felt ; but in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 Madi- 
son sounded the note of warning : — 

Experience proves a tendency in our governments to throw all power 
into the legislative vortex. The Executives of the states are little 
more than ciphers. The Legislatures are omnipotent. If no effectual 
check be devised on the encroachments of the latter, a revolution will 
be inevitable. 

It will be our task later on to consider what light another 
century" has thrown upon this comment of Mr. Madison. 
At present the question is, by what method can public 
opinion, in its widest significance, be most effectively 
brought to bear upon the powers of government, and we 
have reached the conclusion that to this end the public 
attention should be concentrated upon individuals. It is 
evident that this can only be effectually done in the ex- 
ecutive branch, because, according to the well-known say- 
ing, " Deliberation is the work of many : execution is the 
work of one." The ideal constitution of the executive is 
a single head, surrounded by a staff of his own selection, 
appointed and removed at his pleasure, one man being at 
the head of each department ; all subordinates to be ap- 
pointed by the heads of departments, subject to their 
responsibility to the single head of all, every position 
being held by a single man. Thus, and thus only, can 
discipline, subordination, and responsibility be maintained. 
Thus, and thus only, can the people, by the election of the 
single head, express their approval or disapproval of ad- 
ministration as a whole. Boards, committees, or com- 
missions at every point weaken efficiency and divide 
responsibility. Either one strong-willed man will direct 
the whole action, at the same time that he gets but a frac- 
tion of the credit or blame, and, as he cannot get the honor 
which accrues from the first, will be tempted to the gain 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 47 

which is concealed by the absence of the last : or else each 
will make concessions to the others, with resulting weak- 
ness and uncertainty, for which neither can be blamed, 
especially by a multitude who cannot weigh considerations, 
but if they are to see a thing must have it placed before 
them in the plainest possible light. 1 

Equally, if not more, fatal, is the separate election, 
whether by the people or by their representatives, that 
is, a legislature, of the different subordinate parts of the 
executive chain. We shall see how in several experi- 
ments of popular government a multiplicity of elections, 
even in the executive branch, has been held to be neces- 
sary for due control on the part of the people. The fact 
is, as experience has clearly shown, that it is just the re- 
verse. A subordinate separately elected is independent 
of his superior, may defy his orders, and intrigue against 
him with impunity. A superior who cannot control his 
subordinates of course cannot ask for election upon a 
promise of, or a reference to, good administration, which 
is beyond his power ; and so election comes to turn upon 
other considerations, and to bring into power men whose 
success depends, not upon doing good work, but upon 
their skill in massing votes, by whatever methods. If 
the people elect a number of separate, and therefore inde- 
pendent, officials and affairs go wrong, they cannot, with 
the means at their command, tell where they have made a 
mistake, or how to apply the remedy, become confused 
and indifferent, and leave the management of the elec- 
tions, or rather of the nomination of candidates, to those 
who wish to make use of the offices, not for the purpose 
of good administration, but as rewards for party service. 

It is often urged that the wisdom of a board of three or 

1 If you want to get a real political opinion out of an Englishman 
you must ask him a very plain short question, and not a highly complex 
one. —London Spectator, January, 1885. 



48 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

more men is a safer reliance than that of one man. But 
while a superior can always avail himself of the opinions 
of those beneath him, it is better, so far as action is con- 
cerned, that it should possess the vigor of a single will, 
even with the risk of sometimes going wrong, than that it 
should be stamped with the indecision of multiplied 
counsel ; and this is especially true if the object is to fix 
the personal responsibility which most readily attracts the 
attention and influences the decision of the multitude. It 
is urged again that it is impossible for one head to select 
successfully all the individuals of a complex administra- 
tive system. But he does not need to do so. He can 
select the heads of the departments immediately about 
him and hold them responsible for their subordinates, and 
they can do the same in their turn. The world is full, 
and nowhere more so than in the United States, of the 
most wonderful examples of private administration on just 
these terms in railways, factories, retail shops, and indus- 
trial enterprises of all kinds. Considered as purely 
executive work there has perhaps never been anything 
superior to that of the first Napoleon. He failed only 
when he sent his lieutenants into Spain, where with a 
hostile population intervening they were removed from 
his personal control, or when his insane ambition led him 
to aspire to anything so far beyond human power as the 
conquest of all Europe. 

How the executive power thus constituted can be 
restrained by the action of a legislature is a much less 
simple question, as is shown by the fact that no nation has 
yet worked it out satisfactorily. Probably the best defini- 
tion that has ever been given of the true function of legis- 
latures is that of critics with the power of the purse, but 
the line between this and dictators with the same power 
is so far from being laid down with precision that it may 
easily be and almost always is overstepped. 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY, 49 

If the executive is to conduct and be responsible for 
administration, it must of necessity be furnished with such 
agents as are requisite for that purpose, or to put the case 
still more strongly, as it thinks are necessary, because 
otherwise it cannot be held responsible. The legislature 
may, indeed, lay down general lines upon which appoint- 
ments to office shall be made, but as soon as it undertakes 
to interfere peremptorily and beyond the point of criticism 
with individual appointments it encroaches upon execu- 
tive power, responsibility is divided and weakened, and 
the control of the people loses its force. The same is true 
of laws. It is for the executive to submit such laws as it 
may think fitted for the wants of administration ; and for 
the legislature, after suggesting any modifications, to 
accept or reject those laws. If the legislature undertakes 
of its own motion to impose such laws upon the executive 
as it thinks fit, then it encroaches upon the executive 
power, and the latter can no longer be held responsible. 
We shall have occasion later on to test these principles in 
the light of facts, but we may glance for a moment at one 
notable feature in existing popular governments, and that 
is the veto power. In the United States, from the fed- 
eral government through the states to the cities, a veto 
power is nearly everywhere given to the executive, and is 
regarded as a very important part of his attributes. In 
the formation of the French constitution of 1791 there 
was a fierce conflict as to whether a veto power, after sup- 
posed English precedents, should be given to King Louis 
XVI. It may look like presumption to question anything 
which has so far crystallized into tradition, but an analysis 
will show that it involves an absurdity. What sort of 
executive government is that which has no power to say 
what shall be but only what shall not be done ? Imagine 
the captain of a ship with a veto upon sailing directions 
furnished by the crew or even by the owners ; the man- 



50 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

ager of a railway or factory with a veto upon working 
rules prepared by the directors ; the general of an army 
with a veto upon tactics or strategy prepared by his staff 
or even by the king, or emperor, or president, from whom 
I his authority is derived. Anybody who has to conduct 
an administrative work with success must have the power 
to say what he wants and why he wants it. It is for the 
person or body for whom the work is done to approve or 
reject his plans. It is sometimes remarked that the royal 
veto in Great Britain has not been exercised for one hun- 
dred and fifty years. In fact, the veto is exercised more 
or less every year, only it has passed from the executive 
to the legislature, where it properly belongs. The impor- 
tance of this will appear at a later stage. 

That the executive shall be able thus to state and advo- 
cate its plans it is necessary that its representatives should 
be in contact with the legislature, and have at least the 
same right of speech as the members of that body. That 
conception of the separation of executive and legislative 
which excludes this, on the one hand throws the real 
executive power into the hands of the legislature, and on 
the other, while depriving the executive of all honest and 
legitimate power, shields it from publicity and encourages 
intrigue. The men who fill such a place will be likely to 
correspond to it in character, and the effect upon the 
legislature will be just as bad. Whether the men who 
fill the high executive offices in popular governments 
shall be elected by the legislature or the people is another 
important question, to which we shall have to seek the 
answer in the lessons of experience. 

Of the importance and effect of organization in govern- 
ment there can be no better illustration than the his- 
tory of the period from the Declaration of Independence 
of Great Britain to the final establishment of the Consti- 
tution of the United States. There is probably no in- 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 51 

stance in history of a more purely conscious piece of 
organization than that instrument of which Mr. Glad- 
stone said that, "it is the most wonderful work ever 
struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of 
man." Of course no new principles were involved. 
There are no new principles. It is in the application of 
already existing principles that organization consists. 
The extracts following are from the admirable work of 
Mr. John Fiske, " The Critical Period of American His- 
tory." It is well known that the greatest difficulty in 
our War of Independence consisted in the weakness of the 
Continental Congress. 

The length of the war and its worst hardships had been chiefly- 
due to the want of organization. Congress had steadily declined in 
power and in respectability : it was much weaker at the end of the 
war than it was at the beginning ; and there was reason to fear that 
as soon as the common pressure was removed the need for concerted 
action would quite cease to be felt and the scarcely formed Union 
would break in pieces (p. 56). The most fundamental of all the 
attributes of sovereignty, the power of taxation, was not given to 
Congress. It could neither raise taxes through an excise nor through 
custom-house duties ; it could only make requisitions upon the thir- 
teen members of the confederacy in proportion to the assessed value 
of their real estate, and it was not provided with any means of 
enforcing these requisitions. On this point the articles contained 
nothing beyond the vague promises of the states to obey (p. 98). 
It was the same with the soldiers. Congress could call for troops 
or money in strict conformity with the articles; but should any 
state prove delinquent in furnishing its quota, there were no constitu- 
tional means of compelling it to obey the call (p. 99). There is 
no reason for supposing that the people were less at heart in 1781 
in fighting for the priceless treasure of self-government than they 
were in 1864, when they fought for the maintenance of the pacific 
principles underlying our Federal Union. The differences in the 
organization of the government, and in its power of operating directly 
upon the people, are quite enough to explain the difference between 
the languid conduct of the earlier war and the energetic conduct of 
the latter (p. 103). 

It is the effects after peace was made, however, which 
are most instructive. A revolt upon the part of the 



62 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

army was averted only by the personal influence of 
Washington. 

What might have happened was forcibly suggested by a misera- 
ble occurrence in June (1783) about two months after the disbanding 
of the army had begun. Some eighty soldiers of the Pennsyl- 
vania line, mutinous from discomfort and want of pay, broke from 
their camp at Lancaster and marched down to Philadelphia, led by a 
sergeant or two. They drew up in line before the State House, where 
Congress was assembled, and after passing the grog began throwing 
stones and pointing their muskets at the windows. They demanded 
pay, and threatened, if it were not forthcoming, to seize the mem- 
bers of Congress and hold them as hostages or else to break into the 
bank where the federal deposits were kept. The executive council 
of Pennsylvania sat in the same building, and so the federal govern- 
ment appealed to the state government for protection. The appeal 
was fruitless. President Dickinson had a few state militia at his dis- 
posal, but did not dare to summon them for fear they should side with 
the rioters. The city government was equally listless and the towns- 
folk went their ways as if it was none of their business ; and so Con- 
gress fled across the river and on to Princeton, where the college 
afforded it shelter. Thus in a city of thirty-two thousand inhabit- 
ants, the largest city in the country, the government of the United 
States, the body which had just completed a treaty browbeating Eng- 
land and France, was ignominiously turned out of doors by a handful 
of drunken mutineers (p. 112). 

An ominous resemblance to the events of the French 
Revolution less than ten years after ! 

Congress was bound by the treaty with Great Britain to recommend 
to the several states to desist from the persecution of Tories, and to 
give them an opportunity of recovering their estates; and it had 
been further agreed that all private debts should be discharged at 
their full value in sterling money. It now turned out that Con- 
gress was powerless to carry out the provisions of the treaty upon 
either of these points. The recommendations concerning the Tories 
were greeted with a storm of popular indignation. Since the begin- 
ning of the war these unfortunate persons had been treated with sever- 
ity, both by the legislatures and by the people. Many had been 
banished; others had fled the country, and against these refugees 
various harsh laws had been enacted. Their estates had been con- 
fiscated and their return prohibited under penalty of imprisonment 
or death. ... In none of the states did the loyalists receive severer 
treatment than in New York. ... In September, 1783, two months 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 53 

before the evacuation, twelve thousand men, women, and children 
embarked for the Bahamas or for Nova Scotia, rather than stay and 
face the troubles that were coming. ... In some states, the Tories 
were subjected to mob violence. Instances of tarring and feathering 
were not uncommon. In South Carolina notices were posted order- 
ing prominent loyalists to leave the country ; the newspapers teemed 
with savage warnings ; and finally, of those who tarried beyond a cer- 
tain time, many were shot or hanged to trees. . . . The emigration 
which took place between 1783 and 1785 was very large. It has been 
estimated that one hundred thousand persons, or nearly three per cent 
of the total population, quitted the country (pp. 120-129). 

Again one is forcibly reminded of the opening scenes of 
the French Revolution. 

In regard to the loyalists, indeed, the treaty had recognized that 
Congress possessed but an advisory power, but in the other provision 
concerning the payment of private debts, the faith of the United 
States was distinctly pledged. On this point also Congress was power- 
less to enforce the treaty. Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina had all enacted laws obstruct- 
ing the collection of British debts ; and in flat defiance of the treaty 
these statutes remained in force till after the downfall of the Confed- 
eration. In retaliation for this Great Britain refused to withdraw her 
garrisons from the western fortresses, which the treaty had surrendered 
to the United States. The American refusal to pay British creditors 
furnished an excellent excuse, while the weakness of Congress made 
any kind of reprisal impossible; and it was not until Washington's 
second term as President, after our national credit had been restored 
and the strength of our new government made manifest, that England 
surrendered this chain of strongholds, commanding the woods and 
waters of our northwestern frontier (pp. 131-133). 

One of the greatest dangers was with regard to the 
regulation of commerce between the states. 

Meanwhile the different states with their different tariff and ton- 
nage acts began to make commercial war upon one another. No sooner 
had the other three New England states virtually closed their ports to 
British shipping than Connecticut threw hers wide open, an act which 
she followed up by laying duties upon imports from Massachusetts. 
Pennsylvania discriminated against Delaware, and New Jersey, pil- 
laged at once by both her greater neighbors, was compared to a cask 
tapped at both ends. The conduct of New York became especially 
selfish and blameworthy. Under the guidance of Governor Clinton 



54 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the history of that state during the five years following the peace of 
1783, was a shameful story of greedy monopoly and sectional hate. 
Of all the thirteen states, none behaved worse except Rhode Island. 

A single instance which occurred early in 1787 may- 
serve as an illustration. 

The city of New York with its population of thirty thousand souls 
had long been supplied with firewood from Connecticut, and with butter 
and cheese, chickens and garden vegetables, from the thrifty farms of 
New Jersey. This trade, it was observed, carried thousands of dollars 
out of the city and into the pockets of detested Yankees and despised 
Jerseymen. It was ruinous to domestic industry, said the men of 
New York. Acts were accordingly passed, obliging every Yankee 
sloop which came down through Hell Gate and every Jersey market 
boat which was rowed across from Paulus Hook to Cortlandt Street 
to pay entrance fees and obtain clearances at the custom house, just 
as was done by ships from London or Hamburg; and not a cartload 
of Connecticut firewood could be delivered at the back door of a 
country house in Beeckman Street until it should have paid a heavy 
duty. Great and just was the wrath of the farmers and lumbermen. 
The New Jersey legislature made up its mind to retaliate. The city 
of New York had lately bought a small patch of ground on Sandy 
Hook (in New Jersey), and had built a lighthouse there. This light- 
house was the one weak spot in the heel of Achilles where a hostile 
arrow could strike, and New Jersey gave vent to her indignation by 
laying a tax of $1800 a year on it (pp. 144-147). 

Not less dangerous was the question of state boundaries. 
Pennsylvania and Connecticut nearly came to open war 
about the valley of Wyoming, and New York and New 
Hampshire over the territory of the present Vermont. 

Such incidents seem, perhaps, trivial when contrasted with the lurid 
tales of border warfare in older times between half-civilized peoples of 
mediaeval Europe, as we read them in the pages of Froissart and Walter 
Scott. But their historic lesson is not the less clear. Though they 
lift the curtain but a little way, they show us a glimpse of the untold 
dangers and horrors from which the adoption of our Federal Consti- 
tution has so thoroughly freed us, that we can only with some effort 
realize how narrowly we have escaped them (p. 153). 

Added to these things were all sorts of foreign compli- 
cations and financial evils, which may be summed up in 
one sentence : — 



in ORGANIZATION IN DEMOCRACY 55 

By 1786 under the universal depression and want of confidence, 
all trade had well-nigh stopped and political quackery, with its cheap 
and dirty remedies, had full possession of the field (p. 168). 

It will be observed that relief came neither from the 
people nor from Congress, but from the impulse of the 
man who had made himself foremost from the beginning 
of the war. All that the people did, and it was enough, 
was to respond to the appeal. Early in 1785 a joint 
commission from Maryland and Virginia met for con- 
sultation at Washington's house at Mount Vernon, and 
then as Washington's scheme involved the connection of 
the head waters of the Potomac with those of the Ohio, it 
was found necessary to invite Pennsylvania to become a 
party to the compact. 

Then Washington took the occasion to suggest that Maryland and 
Virginia, while they were about it, should agree upon a uniform sys- 
tem of duties and other commercial regulations, and upon a uniform 
currency : and these suggestions were sent, together with the compact, 
to the legislatures of the two states. Great things were destined to 
come from these modest beginnings. Just as in the Yorktown cam- 
paign, there had come into existence a multifarious assemblage of 
events, apparently unconnected with one another, and all that was 
needed was the impulse given by Washington's far-sighted genius to 
set them all at work, surging, swelling, and hurrying straight forward 
to a decisive result (pp. 213, 214). 

As the next step, largely in consequence of the work of 
Madison in the Virginia legislature, commissioners from 
all the states were invited to meet at Annapolis on the 
first Monday of September, 1786, to discuss some uniform 
system of legislation on the subject of trade. Only five 
states being represented the commissioners did not think 
it worth while to go on with their work. But before 
adjourning they adopted an address written by Alexander 
Hamilton, and sent it to all the states, urging that com- 
missioners be appointed to meet in convention at Phila- 
delphia on the second Monday of the following May: — 



56 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, hi 

To devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary 
to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the 
exigencies of the Union, and to report to Congress such an act, as, 
when agreed to by them, and confirmed by the legislatures of every 
state, would effectually provide for the same. 

On the 25th of May, 1787, the Federal Convention met 
at Philadelphia and adjourned on the 17th of September 
following, having, in the intervening four months of 
deliberation with closed doors, worked out upon paper 
that Constitution which has made the United States what 
they are to-day. This is not the place to discuss in detail 
the nature of their work. The future history of this 
country will determine whether it will be covered with 
immortal glory, growing brighter as the centuries elapse, 
or whether, the Union being displaced by a military 
empire, or destroyed and local despotisms established as 
the result of bloody civil wars, it will be banished to the 
storehouse of political relics, as good enough for a country 
of limited population and almost boundless territorial and 
other resources, but, like so many other expedients, power- 
less against the conflict of human passions, in the fierce 
struggle for existence which follows upon density of 
population. 

Two things must, however, be said of it: first, that it 
solved speedily and with almost magical effect all the 
difficulties which then threatened our very existence as a 
nation, and second, the lesson it teaches, that in a popular 
government, perhaps more than any other, sound organi- 
zation is the basis and foundation stone of permanent 
success, and to it we in this country must turn our atten- 
tion if we wish to escape evils which, if they are less 
obvious than those of a hundred years ago, are hardly less 
dangerous to the life of the republic. 



CHAPTER IV 

POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 

rpHE inquirer into the history of popular government, 
-*- at least in modern times, will naturally first turn his 
attention to Great Britain. Not that popular government 
first existed there, for it was not till half a century after 
the French Revolution had proclaimed the doctrine of 
political equality, not till the time of the first reformed 
Parliament in 1832, that Great Britain began even to 
recognize the fact that the masses of the people had any 
right to a share in the government. But in that country 
was first wrought out the application of the principles of 
modern representative government and the relation of 
executive and legislature as they exist there to-day. 

After the long period of barbarism and anarchy which 
followed the fall of the Roman Empire before the invading 
tribes, the first relief was obtained through the feudal 
system. Great lords surrounded themselves with bodies 
of retainers, who received from them land and protection 
in return for military service. Order was thus secured 
within a limited jurisdiction, but the great lords fortified 
themselves in their castles and made war upon each other, 
while they plundered the commercial and producing 
classes, the latter defending themselves as best they could 
through the foundation and growth of cities. Although 
this system formed a great advance upon what preceded 
it, its evils were still so crushing that the lesser powers 
joined with the strongest of the great nobles to put down 
his rivals and establish a dynastic rule by individuals. 

67 



58 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Within the space of two centuries this was brought about 
in England by the Tudors, in France by Louis XL, 
followed by Richelieu, in Spain by Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, and in Russia by the Ivans. In Germany the 
process failed of accomplishment, and that country paid 
a terrible penalty for this failure in the Thirty Years' War. 
Even that effected but little amendment, and the chaos of 
small powers continued till it was broken up by Napoleon, 
while the process of consolidation has approached any- 
thing like reality only in our own time. Italy suffered 
as badly from the same cause down to the revolution 
which is associated with the names of Victor Emmanuel 
and Cavour. 

The Thirty Years' War in Germany had its equivalent 
in England in the wars of the Roses. The desolation and 
the destruction of the nobles came to an end with the 
accession of Henry VII. , while despotism reached its 
highest point under Henry VIII. Both the sex and the 
character of Elizabeth caused some yielding in this re- 
spect, and the elements of parliamentary resistance were 
gathering strength, which the qualities of the Stuarts 
were peculiarly suited to develope. Both James I. and 
Charles I. were firm believers in divine right and preroga- 
tive, while the former was a weak but obstinate pedant, 
and the latter so treacherous that it was soon evident that 
no faith could be kept with him. After Charles had 
governed for eleven years without a Parliament, himself 
exercising all the powers of the State, he found himself 
obliged to summon the body known as the Long Parlia- 
ment, which was to sit for thirteen years and to conduct 
that struggle with the royal prerogative which was to 
culminate in the execution of the king. 

The Long Parliament was not a revolutionary assembly. It com- 
prised men of the best families in England, loyal country gentlemen, 
eminent lawyers, rich merchants, many faithful courtiers, and a large 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 59 

body of resolute Puritans of unflinching purpose, but as yet aiming 
at nothing but effectual securities for liberty. 1 

Yet they were to prove themselves almost as tyrannical 
as the king. 

Not contented with their unquestionable right to denounce abuses 
with a view to the passing of new laws, or the punishment of offences 
against the law before the legal tribunals, Parliament claimed to 
punish as delinquents all persons whom they adjudged guilty of 
offences against the law. 2 . . . Nor did they encroach upon the law 
alone : their encroachments upon prerogative commenced very early 
in the strife. In August, 1640, the two houses passed an ordinance 
without the assent of the king for disarming all the papists in Eng- 
land, and in November another ordinance for raising forces for the 
defence of Ireland. And similar ordinances were passed throughout 
the time of the Long Parliament. 3 

The revolutionary spirit of the Long Parliament was 
further shown by the dealing of the Commons with the 
House of Lords, its own members, and the people. Their 
own will was the only law which they were prepared to 
recognize. They early displayed a determination to deny 
the Lords their lawful rights of legislation. Nor would 
they allow debates in the other House, of which they dis- 
approved, to pass without censure. They punished the 
Duke of Richmond for a few words spoken in his place, 
and impeached twelve of the bishops for a protest against 
the validity of proceedings of the House of Lords while 
they were prevented from attending by the mob. In 
their own House they violently repressed all freedom of 
debate. Opposition to the majority was treated as a 
contempt and punished with commitment or expulsion. 
Privilege had become more formidable than prerogative. 

Petitions had now become an important instrument of political 
agitation. But the Parliament would not tolerate petitions, however 
moderate and respectful, which opposed their policy, or represented 

1 Sir Thomas Erskine May, "Democracy in Europe," Vol. II., p. 385. 
2 I6iU,p. 388. 8 Ibid., p. 389. 



GO THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chai>. 

the opinions of the minority. Often the luckless petitioners were 
even sent to prison. But petitioners who approved the measures 
of the majority were received with favor even when attended by 
mobs, which ought to have been discouraged and repelled. The 
leaders of the popular party also encouraged the assembling of mobs 
for supporting their cause and intimidating their opponents. On 
December 28, 1641, there were disturbances outside both houses 
of Parliament with cries of " No bishops ! " ; and an affray arose 
between some gentlemen and the mob. The Lords desired the 
Commons to join with them in a declaration against these disorders, 
which was discussed there. Strong observations were made upon 
the preferring of petitions by tumultuous assemblies. According to 
Lord Clarendon, however, some members urged that they must not 
discourage their friends, this being a time they must make use 
of all friends, and like practices were continued throughout the 
troubled period of this Parliament. 1 

These quotations are important as showing the inevita- 
ble tendency of a legislative body and foreshadowing the 
course of the French Revolution a century and a half 
later. From its discussions, both civil and religious, the 
Parliament rapidly lost its efficiency, and the more violent 
section gained the upper hand. 

A republican spirit was beginning to be apparent, especially among 
the Independents. They were the first example of a democratic 
party in England. Liberty had often had its fearless champions, 
but democracy was unknown. The Independents had gradually 
separated themselves from the Presbyterians, and as their creed 
was more subversive of ecclesiastical institutions, so were their 
political views more violent and implacable. Their political ideal 
was a republic without king or nobles, in which all citizens should 
enjoy an absolute equality. 

Cromwell, who had already risen to eminence as a soldier, clearly 
foresaw that the army would soon give law both to king and 
Parliament, and his character and opportunities alike led him to 
seek power from the soldiery rather than from Parliament. . . . The 
ambitious leaders of the Independent party, jealous of the ascendency of 
the Presbyterians in Parliament, in the army, and in the chief offices 
of the state, conceived a cunning scheme for stripping them of their 
power. Their preachers, having first denounced the self-seeking and 

1 Sir Thomas Erskine May, "Democracy in Europe," Vol. II., pp. 
390-392. 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 61 

covetous disposition of members of Parliament who had taken to 
themselves the chief commands in the army and the most lucrative 
civil offices, — to the injury of the state, and against the manifest 
will of God, who had made their enterprises to fail, — proposed the 
celebrated " self-denying ordinance." By this ordinance the members 
of both houses were called upon to renounce all their military 
commands and civil offices, and after much debate and with many 
misgivings the Presbyterian majority, against whose domination it 
was obviously directed, were persuaded or constrained to submit to 
this act of suicide. 1 The rule of the Parliament was at an end, and 
had passed into the hands of the bold and crafty general. The 
leaders of the Presbyterian party were proscribed and forced to 
withdraw, and every demand of the army was conceded. When 
the army withdrew, the Parliament was coerced by the apprentices 
and populace of London. In times of revolution, when law and 
order are in abeyance, a Parliament is impotent. Its accustomed 
supports — respect for the law, the reverence of the people, and the 
material aid of the executive power — are wanting, and it becomes 
the sport of military dictation on the one side and popular violence 
on the other. And such was now the abject condition of the once 
powerful Long Parliament. 2 On the 10th of April, 1653, Cromwell 
broke in upon that body with his soldiers, took away " that bauble," the 
mace, — the emblem of its authority, — and dissolved the assembly 
which was no longer his slave. The members whom he now insulted 
and trampled upon were of his own Independent party; they had 
served his purpose for a time and were now put out of his way. 3 

The government of Cromwell was certainly not worse 
than those which by a third of a centnry preceded and 
followed it, and it had at least the merit of vigor and effi- 
ciency, but it showed at his death the weakness of even 
the best despotism, the impossibility of providing a com- 
petent successor. His son Richard proved to be wholly 
incapable. A remnant of the Long Parliament was twice 
called together and twice dispersed, the first time by 
Cromwell's army, and the second by that of Monk as he 
marched from the north for the restoration of royalty. 

1 Ibid., pp. 401-403. Compare the events of August 4, 1789, in France 
(post, Chap. VIII.) and the act of May 10, 1791, excluding members of 
the Constituent from the Legislative Assembly ; also the general course 
of the French Revolution. 2 j^^ p> 407. 8 Ibid., p. 423. 



62 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The Long Parliament was at last effectually dissolved, and the 
history of that body, and of every other Parliament since the com- 
mencement of the Civil War, shows that in times of revolution free- 
dom of election and freedom of discussion in a legislative body are 
unknown. The legislature is subservient to the dominant party in 
the army or among the populace; and independence is incompatible 
with the conditions of a revolutionary government. 1 

The statement might with truth be made much stronger 
than this ; that even in times of peace and tranquillity 
government by a legislature drifts steadily towards anarchy, 
which will of itself produce convulsion, and that it is only 
a question of time when the people, in a state of disgust, 
will look on with indifference at the expulsion or subjec- 
tion of such a body by the strong hand of a master. 

Fortunately for England and mankind, Charles and 
James II., especially the latter, were as little suited as 
James and Charles I. to become constitutional monarchs, 
and the nation had acquired habits of resistance. Upon 
the flight of James, a convention summoned for the pur- 
pose declared the throne to be vacant, and provided for the 
succession by its own act. It is trUe that Mary might 
have put forward a show of divine right to succeed her 
father, but that was not the case with William, and 
William would be king or nothing. Sending for some 
political leaders of note, he disclaimed any right or 
wish to dictate to the convention, but gave them clearly 
to understand that he would not accept the position 
of regent, nor yet that of king consort, with only such 
a share in the administration as his wife might be 
pleased to allow him. If the Estates offered him the 
crown for life, he would accept it ; if not, he would return 
to his native country. 2 The Declaration of Right accord- 
ingly contained a resolution that the crown should be 
settled on William and Mary for their joint and separate 

1 Sir Thomas Erskine May, op. cit, Vol. II., p. 433. 
a Macaulay, «« History of England," Vol. II., Chap. X. 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 63 

lives, but with the administration of the government dur- 
ing their joint lives in William alone. Upon the failure 
of issue in William and Mary, and also in Anne, accord- 
ing to the Act of Settlement passed by the Whigs in 1700, 
the crown was settled on the descendants of the Princess 
Sophia of Hanover, a younger daughter of a daughter of 
James I. There were before her James II., his son, the 
descendants of a daughter of Charles I., and elder chil- 
dren of her own mother. But the Whigs passed these 
over because they were Catholics, and selected the Prin- 
cess Sophia, who, if she was anything, was a Protestant. 1 
In both these cases the crown was granted by Parliament 
as a matter of bargain, and upon conditions. By these 
transactions, even more than by the execution of Charles 
I., the mystic obligation to the occupant of the throne 
was done away. 

The doctrines of the divine and hereditary right of absolute royal 
power, of the passive obedience of the subject, were negatived once 
and forever by the Revolution. 2 

However it may please Englishmen to say that Queen Victoria 
rules by "God's grace," she does so in fact in virtue of an Act of 
Parliament, 6th Anne, c. 7. 8 

In outer seeming the Revolution of 1688 had only transferred the 
sovereignty over England from James to William and Mary. In 
actual fact it had given a peaceful and decisive impulse to the great 
constitutional progress which was transferring the sovereignty from 
the king to the House of Commons. From the moment when its sole 
right to tax the nation was established by the Bill of Rights and when 
its own resolve settled the practice of granting none but annual 
supplies to the Crown, the House of Commons became the supreme 
power in the state. 4 

The question for the future to settle was how, under 
what conditions, and with what effect the House of Com- 

1 W. Bagehot, op. cit., The Monarchy. 

2 Taswell-Langmead, "English Constitutional History," p. 663. 
8 Bagehot, ibid. 

* Green, " History of the English People," Book VIII., Chap. III. 



64 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

mons would exercise this power. The outlook at first 
was not promising. 

But the king of England could do nothing without the House of 
Commons. And the House of Commons, though it had hitherto sup- 
ported him zealously and liberally, was not a body on which he could 
rely. It had, indeed, got into a state which perplexed and alarmed all 
the most sagacious politicians of that age. There was something 
appalling in the union of such boundless power and such boundless 
caprice. The fate of the whole civilized world depended upon the 
votes of the representatives of the English people, and there was no 
public man who could venture to say, with confidence, what the 
representatives might be induced to vote within twenty-four hours. 

The truth was that the change which the Revolution had made in 
the situation of the House of Commons had made another change 
necessary, and that other change had not yet taken place. There was 
parliamentary government, but there was no Ministry ; and without a 
Ministry the working of a parliamentary government such as ours 
must always be unsteady and unsafe. It is essential to our liberties 
that the House of Commons should exercise a control over all depart- 
ments of the executive administration. And yet it is evident that a 
crowd of five or six hundred people, even if they were intellectually 
much above the average of the members of the best Parliament, even 
if every one of them were a Burleigh or a Sully, would be unfit for 
executive functions. It has been truly said that every large collec- 
tion of human beings, however well educated, has a tendency to 
become a mob, and a country of which the Supreme Executive Coun- 
cil is a mob is surely in a perilous position. 1 

We shall find abundant evidence of the truth of these 
remarks as applied to other countries, where, while there 
is a nominal executive, it has been reduced to impotence 
and all the powers of government absorbed by the legisla- 
ture. As the solution of the difficulty, so far as it has 
been solved, came through the establishment of cabinet 
government ; and as this institution, by the consent of 
almost all English political writers, is regarded as the 
central motive force in all the history of Great Britain 
since the Revolution, it is interesting to trace its history. 

The Privy Council was a development of the consilium 

1 Macaulay, op. cit., Chap. XX. 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 65 

ordinarium, a body of men existing from the earlier time 
and selected by the king as his advisers. It varied from 
time to time both in numbers and as to the character of 
its duties, sometimes acting in support of the king against 
Parliament, and sometimes of the Parliament against the 
Crown. Down to the Revolution — 

the Privy Council continued to be the constitutional body of 
advisers of the king, whom he was bound by the laws and customs 
of the realm to consult. But Charles II. hated the delays and 
restraints imposed upon his designs by long debates in the Council, 
and, having greatly augmented its members, was able to allege with 
truth that the great number of the Council made it unfit for the 
secrecy and despatch which are necessary in great affairs. Availing 
himself of one of the peculiar characteristics of the Council, its action 
through committees, Charles formed a small select committee or 
Cabinet Council with whom he concerted all measures of importance 
before submitting them for formal ratification to the whole body of 
Privy Councillors. 

In 1679 an attempt was made by the advice of Sir William Temple 
to restore the Privy Council, consisting of thirty members, great 
nobles and wealthy landowners, to its former position. By the 
advice of this Council of Thirty Charles II. pledged himself to 
be guided in all affairs of state, but the pledge was quickly broken 
and an interior or Cabinet Council was again formed. 

The Privy Council still remains the only legally recognized body, 
but the Cabinet, though altogether unknown to the law, and for a 
long time regarded as unconstitutional and dangerous, has gradually 
drawn to itself the chief executive power and become by universal 
consent and usage the essential feature of our parliamentary system 
of government. Since the Revolution it has become a ministry 
nominally appointed by the sovereign, but in reality an executive 
committee of the two Houses of Parliament practically chosen by 
the majority of the House of Commons. 1 

The change began at once under William, but nearly a 
century and a half was to elapse before the ministry was 
formed into that instrument of the public will which it 
has since become. In the discussion of the practice which 
prevails in this country of excluding the cabinet officers 
from the debates and proceedings of Congress, it is often 
1 Taswell-Langmead, op. cit., pp. 671 et seq. 



66 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

assumed that the framers of our Federal Constitution de- 
liberately rejected the contrary practice of Great Britain. 
On this point Hon. James Bryce remarks : — 

These observations may suffice to show why the Fathers of the 
Constitution did not adopt the English parliamentary or cabinet 
system. They could not adopt it because they did not know of its 
existence. They did not know of it because it was still immature, 
because Englishmen themselves had not understood it, because the 
recognized authorities did not mention it. There is not a word in 
Blackstone, much less in Montesquieu, as to the duty of ministers to 
resign at the bidding of the House of Commons, nor anything to in- 
dicate that the whole life of the House of Commons was destined to 
centre in the leadership of ministers. Whether the Fathers would 
have imitated the cabinet system, had it been proposed to them, may 
be doubted. But as the idea never presented itself, we cannot say 
that it was rejected, nor cite the course they took as an expression of 
their judgment against the system under which England and her 
colonies have so far prospered. 1 

Mr. W. Bagehot also expresses the same idea. 

Living across the Atlantic and misled by accepted doctrines, the 
acute framers of the Federal Constitution, even after the keenest 
attention, did not perceive the prime minister to be the principal 
executive of the British Constitution, and the sovereign a cog in the 
mechanism. There is, indeed, much excuse for the American legisla- 
tors in the history of that time. They took the idea of our constitu- 
tion from the time when they encountered it. But in the so-called 
government of Lord North George III. was the government. Lord 
North was not only his appointee but his agent. The minister car- 
ried on a war which he disapproved and hated because it was a war 
which his sovereign approved and liked. Inevitably, therefore, the 
American Convention believed the king, from whom they had suf- 
fered, to be the real executive, and not the minister from whom they 
had not suffered. 2 

The next inquiry which presents itself is why this insti- 
tution, which some of the writers quoted above assert to 
have begun to take form immediately after the Revolu- 
tion, is stated by others not to have existed so late as our 

1 Bryce, "American Commonwealth," Part I., Chap. XXV., p. 279. 
3 Bagehot, op. cit., The Monarchy. 



it POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 67 

War of Independence, and in what consists the difference 
of its action during the last century and the present. 
From the first the principle made itself felt that the min- 
istry was to be responsible to Parliament, but the greater 
principle had not yet appeared that Parliament was to be 
responsible to the country. It has already been observed 
that while the upper House was made up of great nobles, 
landowners, and ecclesiastical dignitaries, the House of 
Commons was also under their control by means of nomina- 
tion boroughs, and thus the influence of the Crown was 
still predominant. 

The powers of the Crown, indeed, were now exercised by ministers 
responsible to Parliament, and the House of Commons was no longer 
held in awe by royal prerogative. Yet so great were the attributes of 
royalty and so numerous its sources of influence that for more than a 
century after the Revolution it prevailed over the more popular ele- 
ments of the Constitution. The Crown now governed with more 
difficulty and was forced to use all its resources for the maintenance 
of its authority, but it governed as completely as ever. 

Vast and various were the sources of this influence. The Crown 
bestowed everything which its subjects desired to obtain, — honors, 
dignities, places, and preferments. Such a power reached all classes 
and swayed constituents as well as Parliament. 1 

To William III. fell the task of first working out the difficult prob- 
lem of a constitutional government, and amongst his expedients for 
controlling his parliaments was that of a multiplication of offices. 2 

After various attempts to check the evil, it was put into 
the Act of Settlement : — 

That no person who has an office or place of profit under the king 
or receives a pension from the Crown shall be capable of serving as a 
member of the House of Commons. 8 

But this was not only fatal to the existence of a minis- 
try taken from the House of Commons, but destroyed the 
principal means by which the king's government was car- 
ried on, and it was repealed by 4th Anne, c. 8, s. 25. 

1 T. Erskine May, "Constitutional History of England," Vol. I., 
Chap. I., pp. 1-2. 2 Ibid., p. 307. 3 Ibid. 



68 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Civil Service Reform had still to wait for another hundred 
and fifty years. 

One of the most effective agents for the management 
and control of parliaments has always been and still is the 
division of parties. But the discovery of this did not 
come at once. William at first selected his ministers from 
both parties, and only later, on the advice of Sunderland, 
wholly from one. 

But everybody could perceive that at the close of 1693 the chief 
offices in the government were distributed not unequally between the 
two great parties, that the men who held the offices were perpetually 
caballing against each other, haranguing each other, moving votes of 
censure on each other, exhibiting articles of impeachment against 
each other, and that the temper of the House of Commons was wild, 
ungovernable, and uncertain. Everybody could perceive that at the 
close of 1696 all the principal servants of the Crown were Whigs 
closely bound together by public and private ties and prompt to 
defend one another against every attack, and that the majority of 
the House of Commons was arrayed in good order under those lead- 
ers, and had learned to move like one man at the word of command. 1 

William, however, was almost wholly absorbed in for- 
eign affairs and did not adhere very closely to the rule, 
while under Anne the intrigues of the Duchess of Marl- 
borough and Mrs. Masham again brought personal ques- 
tions into the chief place. 

It was under the first two kings of the house of Hanover that par- 
liamentary government by means of a ministry, nominally the king's 
friends but really an executive committee representing the will of the 
party majority for the time being in the House of Commons, was 
fully and finally established. 2 

It is not unfair, however, to say, according to nearly all 
historians, that, from the time of the Revolution down 
into this century, the principal force relied on for man- 
aging parliaments was bribery in one form or another, 

1 Macaulay, op. cit., Chap. XX. 

2 Taswell-Langmead, op. cit., p. 677. 



it POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 69 

whether through places and pensions, shares in lucrative 
commercial enterprises, the sale of nomination boroughs, 
or direct payments of money. The names of Harley, Earl 
of Oxford, in Anne's reign, of Sir Robert Walpole from 
her death till 1742, and then of the Duke of Newcastle to 
the reign of George III., are synonymous with political 
corruption. But they at least had only to manage their 
own party majority. The first two Georges were too 
much interested in their dominion of Hanover to care 
very greatly about the domestic affairs of Great Britain. 
George III., on the other hand, came to the throne 
determined himself to govern, and the " king's friends" 
were the party in which he took most interest. Bribery 
in some form, therefore, flourished throughout his reign. 
The Act of Union with Ireland was notoriously carried 
by bribery as shameless as was ever practised in the 
kingdom. 

In 1809 Mr. Cur wen brought in an act to prevent the obtaining 
of seats in Parliament by corrupt practices, which after much discus- 
sion was passed. But until 1832 an extensive sale of similar boroughs 
continued to be negotiated by the secretary to the treasury, by the 
" whippers in " of the Opposition, and by proprietors and close cor- 
porations. So long as any boroughs remained which could be bought 
and sold, the market was well supplied both with buyers and sellers. 1 

We have next to consider how it was that the country 
escaped from this state of things. 

The House of Commons in the worst times still professed its 
responsibility to the people. The restraint upon Parliament and the 
governing classes lay in the division of party and in the press. The 
party in opposition was forced to rely upon popular principles. Party 
again supplied the place of an intelligent public opinion. As yet the 
great body of the people had neither knowledge nor influence. Had 
all parties combined against popular rights, nothing short of another 
revolution could have overthrown them. But as they were divided 
and opposed, the people obtained extended liberties before they were 

1 T. Erskine May, op. cit., Vol. I., Chap. VI., p. 287. 



70 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

in a position to wrest them from their rulers by means of a free rep- 
resentation. 1 

Meanwhile the press was gradually creating a more ele- 
vated public opinion to which all parties were obliged to 
defer. It was long, however, before that great political 
agent performed its office worthily. The turning-point 
in the history of Parliament seems to have been the estab- 
lishment of the publicity of its proceedings. 

In 1641 the Long Parliament permitted the publication of its pro- 
ceedings, which appeared under the title of " Diurnal Occurrences in 
Parliament." The printing of speeches, however, without leave of 
the House was for the first time prohibited. In particular cases, 
indeed, when a speech was acceptable to the Parliament it was 
ordered to be printed; but if any speech was published obnoxious 
to the dominant party, the vengeance of the House was speedily pro- 
voked. 

The prohibition to print debates was continued after the Restora- 
tion, but in order to prevent inaccurate accounts of the business 
transacted, the House of Commons in 1680 directed its "votes and 
proceedings" to be published under the direction of the Speaker. 
Debates were also frequently published notwithstanding the prohi- 
bition. 

After the Revolution Parliament was more than ever jealous of 
the publication of its proceedings or of any allusion to its debates. 
By frequent resolutions and by the punishment of offenders both 
houses endeavored to restrain " news-letter writers " from intermed- 
dling with their debates or other proceedings, or giving any account 
or minute of their debates. 2 

In other words, when the Parliament was engaged in a 
doubtful struggle with the Crown, it wished to appeal to 
the sympathy and support of the country. As soon as it 
felt sure of its position, it aimed to be a law unto itself. 
It is curious to trace the struggle between privilege and 
the desire for political news in a free country. 

Towards the close of Queen Anne's reign regular but imperfect 
accounts of all the principal debates were published by Boyer. In 

i T. Erskine May, op. cit., Vol. I., Chap. VI., pp. 325, 326. 
2 Tbid., Vol. L, Chap. VII., pp. 414, 415. 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 71 

1738 the Commons prohibited the publication of debates or proceed- 
ings as well during the recess as the sitting of Parliament, and re- 
solved to proceed with the utmost severity against offenders. 1 

That is to say, the increasing power of party and of 
corrupt influence at once increased the predominance of 
Parliament and its disinclination to have its doings made 
known. 

In the years following, the reporters, being in fear of parliamentary 
privilege, became cautious and resorted to evasions and disguises. 
The debates were assigned to the " Senate of Great Lilliput " and the 
" Political Club," and the speeches were attributed to Mark Antony, 
Brutus, and other worthies. 2 

The writers were accordingly not held to accuracy, and 
the supposed reports were made the vehicle of ridicule 
and invective of the fiercest kind. This abuse of report- 
ing was urged as a reason why it should be suppressed, 
but it seems as if only the most perverted motives of self- 
interest could have avoided the conclusion, that the way 
to get correct and impartial reports was to publish an 
authorized version of them. The crisis came in the 
winter of 1771. The details of the contest between the 
House of Commons and the printers who undertook to 
report its proceedings may be read in the pages of May. 
The House was completely and finally beaten. 

Thus ended this painful and embarrassing conflict. Its results 
were decisive. The publication of debates was still asserted to be a 
breach of privilege, but the offence was committed with impunity. 
Another contest with the press, supported by a powerful opposition 
and popular sympathy, was out of the question, and henceforth the 
proceedings of both houses were freely reported. Parliament as well 
as the public has since profited by every facility which has been 
afforded to reporting. 3 

The effects were not long in making themselves felt. 
The history of parliamentary reform will be touched upon 

WMd., p. 415. * Ibid., -p. 416. * Ibid., p. 427. 



72 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

later. It is sufficient here to say that in 1832, with the 
first parliamentary reform act, the English government was 
established substantially upon the basis on which it has 
been carried on for the last sixty years. The governing 
power is in the hands of an executive ministry, nominally 
appointed by the sovereign, but practically a committee 
in accordance with the wishes of the majority of Parlia- 
ment, or rather of the House of Commons. This ministry 
has the guidance and control of legislation, and is respon- 
sible for that as well as administration. As this responsi- 
bility is to Parliament, the ministry must resign upon 
any serious adverse vote of the parliamentary majority, 
their defence consisting in a dissolution of Parliament and 
an appeal to the country. The sovereign is supposed to 
have no official but only a personal influence. The 
maxim is that the king can do no wrong. If any wrong 
is done, it is because his ministers have given him bad 
advice, and they must be sacrificed, as he cannot be. It 
is evident that the only way in which the sovereign can 
get any ministers, or any government carried on, is by 
subordinating his will to theirs. 

It may be well to sum up the results at which we have 
arrived in this chapter. We have seen that the Long 
Parliament rose in resistance to the arbitrary power of 
the Crown ; that it was successful in that resistance, but 
wholly failed as an instrument of government on account 
of its discordant elements and the want of leadership and 
discipline, which alone can make it possible for a large 
body of men to govern ; that the consequent anarchy led 
to its displacement by a military dictator ; that his rule 
failed, where even the best despotism must always fail, in 
its inability to provide a competent successor; that the 
recurrence of anarchy upon his death led to the restora- 
tion of the Stuarts ; that the Parliament again success- 
fully resisted the arbitrary power of the Crown, and by a 



iv POPULAR GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 73 

formal legislative act annulled the supposed divine right 
of hereditary succession and vested the royal authority in 
another person ; that Parliament was again falling into 
anarchy, but was rescued from it by the crystallizing of 
power in the hands of an executive ministry ; that the 
question for the next century and a half was, whether the 
responsibility of this ministry, which, unless it was to be a 
mere lawless despotism, must be responsible to somebody, 
should be to the Crown, to Parliament, or to the nation ; 
that from an early period, indeed, the principle was settled 
that the ministry must be responsible to, that is, hold 
their places at the pleasure of, the parliamentary majority, 
but for a long time the majority was held in subjection to 
the will of the Crown, by means of offices and pensions 
and other forms of bribery ; that while a certain depend- 
ence upon public opinion was always maintained by the 
organized efforts of the party in opposition, the full trans- 
fer of power to the will of the nation as a motive force 
was not accomplished till the time of the first parlia- 
mentary reform. It must be observed, however, that even 
then and now the responsibility of government by the 
ministry is not directly to the people, bat only indirectly 
through Parliament, a fact carrying important conse- 
quences, which we shall have to discuss presently. Our 
next task will be to examine the working and effects of 
this system of ministerial government. 



CHAPTER V 

CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 

A LMOST, if not quite, all of the modern political 
-*-*- writers are agreed that the essential feature of the 
British government consists in the position and functions 
of the Cabinet. It may be said also that the most impor- 
tant difference, next to the degree of extension of the 
suffrage, between the British and all other parliamentary 
or representative governments consists in the modifica- 
tion or absence of this feature. It is necessary at the 
outset, therefore, to inquire into the exact nature of the 
institution and the conditions of its working. The Brit- 
ish Cabinet is not known to the law at all, but as a 
matter of usage it consists of certain members of the 
Privy Council. 

Its numbers are indefinite and variable, for it is competent to the 
statesman who is charged with the formation of a particular ministry, 
with the consent of the sovereign, to determine the number of minis- 
ters who shall have seats in the Cabinet. 

The first Cabinet of George I. consisted of eight mem- 
bers ; the first of George III. of fourteen members. Of 
late years it has reached fifteen and sixteen, which seems, 
in the opinion of most statesmen, to be quite as large as 
is desirable. There are certain officers of state who under 
modern usages would form a part of any cabinet ; namely, 
the first lord of the treasury, the chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, the principal secretaries of state, now five in 
number, the first lord of the admiralty and the lord high 
chancellor, and by custom the lord president of the coun- 

74 



chap, v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 75 

cil and the lord privy seal. To these are added other 
ministerial functionaries, never less than three, and rarely 
so many as seven or eight, selected more for their per- 
sonal and political weight, or for the claims of the indi- 
vidual, rather than from the special importance of the 
office he may hold. 1 

Of these persons one is called the Premier, who may 
be either a peer or a commoner. The distinction is per- 
sonal and not official. It might be conferred on one who 
held no departmental position whatever. Usually, how- 
ever, the prime minister has held the office of first lord 
of the treasury, either alone or in connection with that of 
the chancellor of the exchequer. By modern usage it is 
understood that no one but the premier is the direct 
choice of the Crown, whilst his colleagues in office are 
selected by himself, subject, of course, to the approval of 
the Crown. He is emphatically and especially the king's 
minister, the one in whom the Crown constitutionally 
places its confidence, but he stands between his col- 
leagues and the sovereign, and is bound to be loyal to 
both.2 

The office of prime minister, as it is now exercised, is a proof and 
a result of the necessity, which now exists in our political system, for 
the concentration of power and responsibility in the hands of one 
man, in whom the sovereign and the nation can alike confide, and 
from whom they have a right to expect a definite policy and a vigor- 
ous administration. 3 

Upon the resignation or dismissal of a ministry, in consequence of 
an adverse vote in Parliament, it is customary for the sovereign to 
send for some recognized party leader, in one or other house of Par- 
liament, and intrust him with the formation of a new administration. 
Or should the position of parties be such that no particular person 
appears to the king to be specially eligible for the post of prime 

1 A. Todd, "Parliamentary History of England," Vol. II., pp. 189 
et seq. 

2 Mr. Gladstone, quoted by A. Todd, Vol. II., p. 183. 

3 Ibid., v. 174. 



76 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chak 

minister, he may select any one in whom he can repose sufficient 
confidence. 1 

The task of forming an administration is left almost exclusively 
with the prime minister, and yet he can scarcely be regarded as un- 
fettered in the choice of his colleagues, inasmuch as he is obliged to 
select them from amongst the most prominent and able men of his 
own party who are likely to command the confidence of Parliament, 
and the selection of individual ministers is sometimes the result of a 
combination of parties, rather than the act of a prime minister him- 
self. It has been well observed "that the position of most men in 
Parliament forbids their being invited to the Cabinet, the position of 
a few men ensures their being invited. Between the compulsory list, 
whom he must take, and the impossible list, whom he cannot take, 
a prime minister's independent choice in the formation of a cabinet 
is not very large ; it extends rather to a division of the cabinet 
offices, than to the choice of cabinet ministers. Parliament and the 
nation have pretty well settled who shall have the first places, but 
they have not discriminated with the same accuracy which man shall 
have which place." 2 

It is for this reason that the Cabinet is almost always 
described as a committee of Parliament. We shall have 
to consider, presently, some effects of this peculiar rela- 
tion between its members. There are some fifty other 
officials, 3 besides those in the Cabinet, whose positions 
are necessarily vacated with each change of administra- 
tion. Apart from these all the government offices are 
permanent, and for the most part regulated by the Civil 
Service Act of 1853. 

Having traced the origin and the formation of the 
English Cabinet, we must now consider the mode in which 
this comparatively modern institution is brought into 
active cooperation with other parts of the political fabric. 
It is by means of the introduction of the ministers of the 
Crown into Parliament, for the purpose of carrying on the 
government in direct relation with that body, that the re- 

1 Todd, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 183. 

2 Bagehot, "English Constitution," quoted by A. Todd, Vol. II., 
p. 191. 

8 A list of them is given by Mr. Todd, Vol. II., p. 201. 



CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 77 



IS 



sponsibility of ministers for every act of government 
practically exemplified and enforced. 

The whole executive functions of the Crown have been intrusted to 
ministers, and in order that those functions may be exercised in 
conformity with the most enlightened opinions of the great council 
of the nation, it is indispensable that the king's ministers should 
be selected from amongst that council. Having in their individual 
capacity as members of one or other of the legislative houses a right 
to sit therein, they are thus brought face to face with those who are 
privileged to pronounce authoritatively upon the policy of the govern- 
ment, and whose consent must be accorded to their very continuance 
in office as ministers of the Crown. 1 Ministers are necessarily the 
depositaries of all the secrets of State, and have access to the highest 
sources of information on every political question. They are usually 
men who from their ability and experience are peculiarly qualified to 
guide the deliberations of Parliament and to aid their fellow-members 
in forming sound conclusions upon every public matter that may be 
brought before them. They distribute the patronage of the Crown at 
their own discretion, which in itself adds very materially to their 
authority and influence. These advantages are of inestimable service 
in enabling them to mature and propound acceptable measures, and in 
facilitating the progress of the same through the legislative chambers. 

On the other hand either house of Parliament is at liberty to give 
free expression to its opinion upon every ministerial act or measure, 
and no administration can long remain in office that does not possess the 
confidence of Parliament and particularly of the House of Commons. 
In giving or withholding their confidence the houses of Parliament 
are only restrained by considerations of public policy. Unless they 
are satisfied that a ministry which does not fully represent their 
political sentiments can be replaced by another more acceptable and 
efficient, they will probably be content with vigilant supervision and 
control over its proceedings and recommendations, rather than to 
incur the hazard of a change of government. But if they believe 
that the direction of public affairs ought to be intrusted to other hands 
they have only to declare either expressly or impliedly that ministers 
have forfeited their confidence and a change must inevitably take 
place. So that whether directly or indirectly the ultimate verdict 
upon every exercise of political power must be sought for in the 
judgment of the House of Commons. 2 

v 1 We shall have occasion to examine hereafter how far these conditions, 
which are almost an article of religious faith in Great Britain, are really a 
necessity of the case. See post, Chap. XXX. 

2 A. Todd, " On Parliamentary Government in England," 2d ed., Vol. 



78 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In examining the various points included in the above 
definition of parliamentary government, the subject will 
naturally fall under three heads. I. The presence of the 
ministers of the Crown in Parliament. II. The functions 
of the ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament. 
III. The responsibility of ministers to Parliament, and 
particularly to the House of Commons. 

I. As already stated, while there is no absolute neces- 
sity for every member of the Cabinet to hold a depart- 
mental office under the Crown, the spirit of the Constitution 
requires that every one occupying a seat in the Cabinet 
should also be a member of one or other of the houses of 
Parliament. And no one should be introduced into the 
Cabinet or be permitted to continue therein, who is out of 
Parliament. 1 Another principle established by the 6th 
Anne, c. 7, ss. 25 and 26, is, that the acceptance by a 
member of the House of Commons of an office of profit 
from the Crown shall thereby vacate his seat, but he may 
nevertheless be reelected, provided his office be one that is 
not declared expressly by statute to be incompatible with 
a seat in the House of Commons. 2 

Originally introduced as a means of protecting the House of Com- 
mons from the undue influence of the Crown, it has ceased to be of 
any value in this respect, and has frequently operated most injuriously 
to the public interests by limiting the choice of persons to form part 
of a ministry to those who were secure of reelection upon their 
acceptance of office. There has been a growing conviction in the 
minds of statesmen ever since the introduction of the first Reform Act 
of 1832 that this clause required some modification in order to adapt 
it to the exigencies of our modern political system. 8 

II. , pp. 288 et seq. This is true because the House of Commons makes 
and can unmake the ministry. We shall see hereafter what different con- 
sequences may follow from the election of the executive directly by the 
people and thus independently of the legislature. Post, Chaps. XXX., 
XXXI. 

i Todd, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 290. 2 Ibid., p. 322. 

8 Ibid., p. 331. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 79 

The same statute of Am.e, ratified and extended by 
subsequent legislation, provides for the positive exclusion 
from the House of Commons of all placemen not required 
therein. Of course this does not apply to members of the 
Cabinet, and certain other officials mentioned by Mr. Todd 
are excepted. It is obvious, however, that if the members 
of the Cabinet were appointed from outside of the legisla- 
ture, this rule might be rigidly applied as required by the 
Constitution of the United States. 

As the ministry for the time being are strictly and exclusively 
responsible for the government of the country in all its various 
branches and details, and as they possess on behalf of the Crown an 
absolute control over all departments of the state, so that every public 
officer in the kingdom is directly or indirectly subordinate to them, it 
is right and in accordance with constitutional practice that there 
should be some minister of the Crown specially answerable for each 
particular branch of the public service, and that every department of 
state should be adequately represented in Parliament. 1 

The representation in Parliament of every prominent department 
of state should not be confined to one chamber merely, but should 
always, whenever it is practicable, include both houses. This is 
desirable, firstly, because of the respect due to each separate and 
independent branch of the legislature ; secondly, in order to promote 
harmony between the executive and legislative bodies; and lastly, 
because it tends materially to facilitate the despatch of public busi- 
ness through Parliament. 2 

The proportion of cabinet ministers to be assigned to either house 
of Parliament varies according to circumstances. The first Cabinet 
of George III. (in 1760) consisted of fourteen persons, thirteen of 
whom were peers, and but one a member of the House of Commons. 
The greatest extreme in the other direction was in Lord Palmerston's 
second administration in 1859, when of the Cabinet of fifteen persons 
five were peers and ten sat in the House of Commons. 3 

II. According to modern constitutional practice, the 
first duty of ministers in relation to Parliament is to 
prepare the speech intended to be delivered by, or on 
behalf of, the sovereign at the commencement and at the 
close of every session. The royal speech is drafted by the 

1 Ibid., p. 300. 2 Ibid., p. 310. 8 Ibid., pp. 311-313. 



80 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

prime minister, or by some one under his advice and 
direction ; it is then submitted to the Cabinet collectively, 
that it may be settled and approved, and it is afterwards 
laid before the sovereign for consideration and sanction. 
The opening speech, while carefully avoiding matter for 
controversy or acrimonious debate, includes a statement 
of the most material circumstances which have occurred 
since Parliament separated, and announces in general 
terms the principal measures which it is the intention of 
ministers to bring under the consideration of Parlia- 
ment. 1 

In addition to the measures specially commended to Parliament in 
the speech from the throne, it is the right and duty of ministers of the 
Crown to submit to its consideration whatever measures they may deem 
to be necessary for the public service. 2 

Formerly ministers were solely responsible- for the fulfilment of their 
executive obligations, and for obtaining the sanction of Parliament 
to such measures as they deemed to be essential for carrying out their 
public policy. But the growing interest which of late years has been 
exhibited by the constituent bodies upon all public questions, and the 
consequent necessity for systematic and enlightened legislation for 
the improvement of our political and social institutions, and for the 
amelioration of the laws in accordance with the wants of an advancing 
civilization, together with the difficulty experienced by private mem- 
bers in carrying bills through Parliament, have led to the imposition 
of additional burthens upon ministers of the Crown, by requiring them 
to prepare and submit to Parliament whatever measures of this de- 
scription may be needed for the public good ; and also to take the 
lead in advising Parliament to amend or reject all crude, imperfect or 
otherwise objectionable measures which may at any time be introduced 
by private members. 3 

By modern practice, no sooner does a great question become practi- 
cal or a small question great, than the House demands that it shall be 
" taken up " by the government. Nor is this from laziness or in- 
difference. It is felt with a wise instinct that only thus can such 
questions in general acquire the momentum necessary to propel them 
to their goal, with the unity of purpose which alone can uphold their 
efficacy and preserve their consistency of character. 4 

1 Todd, op. cit., Vol. II., pp. 355, 369. 2 Ibid., p. 366. 

3 Ibid., p. 368. 4 Ibid. , p. 371, quoting authorities. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 81 

Sir Robert Peel in 1844 insisted that individual members of Parlia- 
ment had a perfect right to introduce such measures as they thought 
fit, without the sanction of the government. But apart from the 
questions of abstract right and of the relative importance of bills 
initiated by private members, the great increase of debates and the 
annual accumulation of arrears of public business of late years have 
combined to render it practically impossible for bills introduced by 
private members to become law unless by the active assistance of the 
government. 1 

While it is the especial duty of ministers of the Crown to prepare 
and submit to Parliament whatever measures may be required for the 
defence of the empire and the support of the civil government, or to 
amend or otherwise improve the fundamental or constitutional laws 
of the realm, and to control by their advice and influence all public 
legislation which is initiated by private members, a most useful 
purpose is served by the previous free investigation and debate in 
Parliament of these and all other questions affecting the public 
welfare. It is not in fact the primary duty of either house to pass 
the measures of the executive, but rather to advise the Crown as to 
the way in which the public service may be most beneficially con- 
ducted and to give expression from time to time to enlightened 
opinions upon the various topics which are attracting public 
attention. This function cannot be adequately fulfilled except by 
granting to private members adequate opportunity for introducing 
to the notice of Parliament projects for effecting desirable reforms 
in our political and social system, and by facilitating the discussion 
of such measures until public opinion is sufficiently agreed upon 
them to render legislation not only safe but expedient, when it will 
become the duty of ministers of the Crown to assume the responsibility 
of advising the passing of bills in Parliament to give effect to the 
same. Nearly all the great reforms which have received the sanction 
of Parliament during the present century have originated in this 
manner. It is then optional with the ministry either to render 
assistance in carrying out the proposed reform, or else to resign and 
give place to others, through whose efforts such legislation might take 
place upon the particular question as would conciliate the good-will 
of the several estates of Parliament. 2 

Perhaps the most important function of the British 
ministry is in their relation to the public finances. 

The Crown, acting with the advice of its responsible ministers, being 
the executive power, is charged with the management of all the 
revenues of the country, and with all payments for the public service. 

i Ibid., pp. 375, 376. * Ibid., pp. 379-381. 

G 



82 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The Crown, therefore, in the first instance, makes known to the Com- 
mons the pecuniary necessities of the government, and the Commons 
grant such aids or supplies as are required to satisfy these demands, 
and provide by taxes and by the appropriation of other sources of the 
public income the ways and means to meet the supplies which are 
granted by them. Thus the Crown demands money, the Commons 
grant it, and the Lords assent to the grant. But the Commons do not 
vote money unless it be required by the Crown, nor impose or augment 
taxes, unless they be necessary for meeting the supplies, which they 
have voted or are about to vote, and for supplying general deficiencies 
in the revenue. The Crown has no concern in the nature or distribu- 
tion of taxes, but the foundation of all parliamentary taxation is its 
necessity for the public service as declared by the Crown through its 
constitutional advisers. 1 

As no supply can be voted so no taxes can be imposed upon the 
subject by Parliament for purposes of public revenue except upon the 
recommendation of the Crown. No private member is permitted to 
propose a tax upon the people ; it must proceed from a minister of the 
Crown or be in some other form declared to be necessary for the public 
service. 2 

According to ancient constitutional doctrine and practice, no 
moneys can be voted by Parliament for any purpose whatever except 
at the demand, and upon the responsibility, of the ministers of the 
Crown. 3 

Should any case arise, however, wherein it may appear to be the 
duty of the House to point out to the government public charges which 
ought to be incurred, they have still undoubted authority to do so ; 
either by the adoption of a resolution expressing an abstract opinion 
in favor of a proceeding which will necessitate a future grant of 
money, or by agreeing to address the Crown to incur certain expendi- 
ture with an assurance of their readiness to make good the same, the 
House is free to approach the Crown with their constitutional advice 
in this as in any other matter of prerogative. 4 

It is also an invariable rule of constitutional practice that ministers 
are not required to answer questions involving an explanation of their 
intentions as to matters of taxation, until they may deem it expe- 
dient to the public interests to declare them. 5 

This is again not at all inconsistent with another 
principle. 

1 Sir T. Erskine May, " Parliamentary Practice," pp. 650, 651, ed. 1883. 

2 Sir T. E. May's evidence before Joint Committee on Despatch of 
Business, 1865-1869, quoted by Todd, Vol. I., p. 709. 

3 Hearn, " Government of England," pp. 349-351. 

* Todd, op. cit.. Vol. I., p. 699. * Ibid. % p. 711. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 83 

From a very early period in the history of England the principle 
has been established that the right of taxation and the granting of 
supplies for the public service belong exclusively to Parliament. 
And it was finally established by the Act of Settlement " That levy- 
ing money for or to the use of the crown by pretence or prerogative 
without grant of Parliament for longer time or in other manner than 
the same is or shall be granted is illegal." 1 

Abstract resolutions advocating changes in the scheme or distribu- 
tion of taxation, or the reduction of particular branches of taxation, 
have been not infrequently submitted to the House of Commons by 
private members, but they have been generally resisted by the gov- 
ernment, as inexpedient and impolitic. It is an important financial 
principle " that the House should not be called on to condemn taxes 
which they are not prepared on the instant to repeal," as by so doing 
they unsettle the minds of commercial men in their business transac- 
tions and occasion embarrassment to the government in their plans 
for the regulation of the public finances. 2 

III. It will be observed that the peculiar responsibility which 
attaches to ministers of the Crown in matters of legislation is confined 
for the most part to the initiation and control of public business. 
As regards private Bills, wherein the rights of private parties are 
adjudicated upon by Parliament in a semi-judicial manner, an oppo- 
site principle prevails ; and in all cases where the public interests are 
not liable to encroachments by applicants for private legislation. 
Thus it was remarked by Sir Robert Peel when home secretary in 
1830. " I must decline interference. with any private Bill, and I can- 
not but think from the experience of every day, that the principle on 
which ministers abstain from any such interference is most salutary." 
Again it was stated by the chancellor of the exchequer (Mr. Baring) 
in 1840, that "it is contrary to all established practice for ministers 
of the Crown to give an opinion upon a private Bill." And in 1872 
a proposal " to place in the hands of a minister, or of the ministers 
of the Crown, the power of putting a veto on private legislation " was 
disapproved of by the House and by the government. 

But if an attempt should be made to infringe upon the established 
rules of Parliament by urging the House to permit a private Bill to 
proceed, notwithstanding the report of the Committee on Standing 
Orders against it, or if the interests of the public were likely to be 
injuriously affected by a private Bill, or if an attempt were made to 
establish an unsound principle by such means, ministers would be 
justified in using their influence to oppose it, whilst on the other 
hand, ministers would be justified in promoting the passing of a pri- 

1 Todd, op. cit, Vol. I., pp. 722, 723. 

2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 713, quoting Mr. Gladstone, 



84 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

vate Bill, if it should appear to be desirable for the public interest, 
because they are responsible for exercising the prerogative of the 
Crown so as to control all legislation in Parliament, whether upon 
public or private matters, for the furtherance of the public welfare 
and for the protection of private rights from unjustifiable aggression. 

Under such circumstances it is proper for the public department 
charged with the duty of watching over the public interests in this 
particular sphere to suggest or require amendments in any private 
Bills, which they may deem to be necessary for the protection of the 
public or for the saving of private rights. 1 

Ministers of the Crown are constitutionally responsible, not merely 
for the preparation and conduct of legislative measures through both 
houses of Parliament, and for the control of legislation which is 
undertaken by private members, but also for the oversight and direc- 
tion of the entire mass of public business which is submitted to 
Parliament. Nothing should be left to the will and caprice of a fluc- 
tuating majority in the legislature, but the efforts of ministers should 
be continually directed to the furtherance of business so as best to 
promote the public interest, and insure the convenience of members 
generally. For ministers are the natural leaders in both houses as 
well as the proper guardians of the power and privileges of Parlia- 
ment. Representing therein the authority of the Crown, and exer- 
cising therein the influence which appertains to them in that capacity, 
they should be able to regulate the performance of all parliamentary 
functions, and the distribution of public business, so as to keep them 
within reasonable limits, and in a steady course. 2 

In 1692, before William III. had constructed his first parliamen- 
tary administration, a formal complaint was made by ministers to 
the king that " nobody knew one day what the House of Commons 
would do the next," and that "it were perhaps too confident a thing 
for any one to pretend to say that Parliament will or will not do any- 
thing whatsoever that may be proposed to them." 8 

The present highly organized system of parliamentary government 
has been elaborated by the wisdom and experience of successive gen- 
erations in order to remedy this evil condition, and to establish har- 
mony and unanimity between the Crown and Parliament. Nowadays, 
immediately upon the formation of a ministry, it assumes, in addition 
to the ordinary duties of an executive government, other and more 
important functions — unknown to the theory of the Constitution — 
namely, the management, control, and direction of the whole mass of 

1 Todd, op. cit., Vol. II., pp. 388-390, quoting authorities. 

2 Ibid., p. 394. 

8 Dairy mple, " Memoirs of Great Britain," quoted by Todd, Vol. II., 
p. 394. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 85 

political legislation, by whomsoever originated, in conformity with its 
own ideas of political science and civil economy ; and so long as a 
ministry commands the confidence of the House of Commons it 
should have sufficient strength to prevent the adoption by Parlia- 
ment of any measure which it may judge to be inexpedient or un- 
wise. 1 

The ministry is also responsible for guiding the deliberations of 
each house of Parliament, so as to secure and maintain the appropri- 
ate privileges of each house in due subordination to established con- 
stitutional principles. In such an endeavor the ministry are usually 
assisted by the cooperation of the leaders of the opposition. 

It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the legislation of the 
House of Commons passes through the hands of the government, and 
the portion of the business of the country which ministers are ex- 
pected and required to transact is yearly increasing. 2 

Successive parliamentary committees have advised the adoption of 
rules to facilitate the distribution and disposal of business in the 
hands of ministers of the Crown, and the House of Commons has 
always evinced the utmost readiness in furthering the same, so far as 
is compatible with the rights and privileges of private members. 3 

The leader of the House of Commons is at liberty to arrange the 
order of business as he thinks fit, it being provided by a standing 
order of the House that " the right be reserved to her Majesty's min- 
isters of placing government orders at the head of the list in the rota- 
tion in which they are to be taken, on the days on which government 
bills have precedence." 4 But usually no control is conceded to minis- 
ters over orders in the hands of private members, which are governed 
by the customary rules of Parliament. 5 

The survey of the structure and conditions of cabinet 
government would not be complete without noticing a 
feature of the English political system which began to be 
developed contemporaneously with the establishment of 
parliamentary government, and which has materially con- 
tributed to the vigor and efficiency of the same, namely, 
the presence in both houses of an organized opposition. 
The political party, of which the administration for the 

i Park's "Dogmas," p. 39, quoted by Todd, Vol. II., p. 395. 

2 Mr. Gladstone, quoted by Todd, ibid., p. 395. 

STodd, ibid.,?. 395. 

4 May, "Parliamentary Practice," quoted by Todd, ibid., p. 398. 

6 Todd, ibid., p. 398. 



86 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

time being is the mouthpiece and representative, is inva- 
riably confronted in Parliament by another party, who 
themselves expect to succeed to power whenever they 
acquire sufficient strength to overthrow their antagonists 
and to assume the responsibility of office. 

The opposition exercise a wholesome influence upon 
parliamentary debate and the conduct of business, for 
they are the constitutional critics of all public affairs ; 
and whatever course the government may pursue they 
naturally endeavor to find some ground for attack. It is 
the function of an opposition to state the case against the 
administration, to say everything which may plausibly be 
said against every measure, act, or word of every member 
of the ministry, in short to constitute a standing censor- 
ship of the government, subjecting all its acts and meas- 
ures to a close and jealous scrutiny. 1 

But just because the opposition expect to assume the 
responsibility of office and to be in their turn confronted 
by another organized opposition, they are under the neces- 
sity of preserving the moderation and adherence to strict 
constitutional lines, which are implied in the term, 4 Her 
Majesty's Opposition,' and they do this under the control 
of a leader who is selected by the party and is just as 
much a positive factor as the prime minister. 

A leader of opposition is usually chosen from personal considera- 
tions, and for the possession of qualities that point him out as the 
most fitting man to be appointed to the direction of the state, or at all 
events to the leadership of the house in which he sits. Meanwhile 
he must be able to command the support of his adherents by sagacity 
in council and promptitude in action. In the words of Lord Boling- 
broke, " the people will follow like hounds the man who will show 
them game." But a political leader must be prudent as well as 
energetic. 2 

1 See article by Sir G. C. Lewis on Parliamentary Opposition, in 
Edinburgh Review, Vol. 101, p. 14 ; also Lewis' letters, p. 288, in Todd, 
Vol. II., p. 416. a Todd, ibid., p. 418. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 87 

It is the practice in both houses of Parliament to permit questions 
to be addressed to ministers of the Crown, and to other members, 
upon matters of public concern. This affords an opportunity for re- 
moving erroneous impressions and disseminating correct intelligence 
upon a variety of topics of political importance or of general interest ; 
it is also serviceable as obviating the necessity in many instances of 
more extended debate and of motions for papers. 

Notice is usually given of the intention to ask questions of minis- 
ters, either by putting a formal notice on the paper or by a private 
intimation, and the want of notice has been stated as a sufficient rea- 
son for not answering a question, and likewise because the inquiry has 
not been directed to the proper minister. But upon urgent occasions 
members may assert the right of putting questions without previous 
notice. In putting questions no argument or opinion should be 
offered, nor epithets used, nor any facts stated, except so far as may 
be necessary to explain the question. And an inquiry has been re- 
fused a reply because it invited an expression of opinion upon a debat- 
able question. 1 

Answers to questions should be confined to the points of inquiry, 
with such explanations only as may be necessary to render the answer 
intelligible. But it has always been usual to accord a greater latitude 
in this respect to ministers of the Crown. Numerous precedents can 
be cited wherein ministers of the Crown and other members have de- 
clined to give any answer to questions which they considered to be 
unnecessary, inexpedient, unusual, impertinent, or as involving mat- 
ter of too much gravity to be dealt with by way of reply to a ques- 
tion. Generally they state reasons for declining to afford the desired 
information, but sometimes when the question is peculiarly objection- 
able no notice whatever is taken of it. 2 

In the preparation of measures to be submitted for the considera- 
tion of Parliament, and in the conduct of public inquiries into matters 
which require the action of the executive government, it is necessary 
that the ministers of the Crown should be able to avail themselves of 
competent assistance from every quarter in collecting accurate infor- 
mation upon all public questions. With a view to afford substantial 
assistance to government in this direction, it has been customary of 
late years for select committees to be appointed by the houses of 
Parliament, either at the suggestion or with the concurrence of minis- 
ters, to investigate various public questions upon which legislation 
founded upon evidence is necessary. But a resort to parliamentary 
committees in such cases is sometimes objectionable, as it may tend to 
diminish the responsibility which properly belongs to the advisers of 
the Crown. 

i Ibid., pp. 421-424. * Ibid., p. 428. 



88 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Preliminary inquiries by a royal commission are of inestimable 
service to the working of parliamentary government. Besides afford- 
ing peculiar facilities for ascertaining facts, they frequently bring to 
light a mass of information upon the subject in hand which could be 
obtained in no other way, and the report of an able and impartial 
commission is often of the highest value in the instruction and en- 
lightenment of the public mind. Commissions of inquiry may be 
properly appointed by the Crown, or by the head of any department 
of state, to examine into a particular grievance or alleged defect in 
the administration of a public department, or to collect information 
on any important public question and advise the Crown upon the 
same. But it would be unconstitutional to refer to a royal commis- 
sion "subjects which are connected with the elementary duties of the 
executive government and with its relations to Parliament ; or to ap- 
point a commission with a view to evade the responsibility of minis- 
ters in any matter; or to do the work of existing departments of 
state, who possess all needful facilities for obtaining information 
upon questions of detail, and who are directly responsible to Parlia- 
ment. A commission of inquiry should be limited in its operations 
to obtaining information and suggesting the points to which it might 
be expedient that legislative or executive action should be directed. 
No commission should be invited to enter upon any question of pol- 
icy, "lest it should trench upon the proper limits of ministerial respon- 
sibility, and upon ground which belongs to Parliament." * 

In the House of Lords, as well as in the Commons, there is invari- 
ably a minister especially intrusted with the lead and management 
of public business on behalf of the executive government. If the 
prime minister be a member of the House of Commons he will person- 
ally undertake the leadership of that House. The extreme importance 
of the duties of this office towards the most popular and powerful 
branch of the legislature places it under any circumstances in the 
front rank of the ministry. The strength and efficiency of a govern- 
ment, and the activity and usefulness of the House itself, largely de- 
pend upon the character, energy, tact, and judgment of the leader of 
the House of Commons. 

In conjunction with his trusty aids, the financial and parliamentary 
secretaries of the treasury, it devolves upon him to control the con- 
duct of business in that chamber so as best to promote the public 
interests. 2 But as the influence exercised by the ministry depends, 
in the first instance, upon the degree of unity and of mutual coopera- 
tion they exhibit between themselves, and finally upon the amount of 

1 Todd, quoting authorities, Vol. II., pp. 431, 435. We shall see the 
force of this in its application to commissions or committees in the 
United States, post, Chap. XXII. 2 Ibid., pp. 454, 456. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 89 

control they are able to exercise over the political party to which 
they belong, it has become an acknowledged principle that, so long as 
a minister, whether the premier or another, continues to form part of 
a government, he shares with his colleagues an equal responsibility for 
everything that is done or agreed upon by them. Except in the case 
of an admitted " open question," it must be taken for granted that 
the whole Cabinet have assented to the ministerial policy as officially 
transacted, or propounded by any minister acting or speaking on 
their behalf. It is not, therefore, allowable for a cabinet minister to 
oppose the measures of government — to shrink from an unqualified 
responsibility in respect to the same — to refrain from assisting his 
colleagues in the advocacy of their particular measures in Parliament, 
or to omit the performance of any administrative act which may be 
necessary to carry out a decision of the government — even though he 
may not have been a consenting party thereto — or to withhold his 
support from the ministry when attacked by their political opponents. 
A minister who infringes any one of these rules is bound to tender 
his immediate resignation of office. 1 

The true doctrine on this subject was enunciated by the Earl of 
Derby in the following terms : " The essence of responsible govern- 
ment is that mutual bond of responsibility one for another wherein 
a government acting by party go together, frame their measures in 
concert, and where, if one member falls to the ground, the others, 
almost as a matter of course, fall with him." 2 

The responsibility of ministers of the Crown to Parliament, as it 
is now understood, is practically a responsibility to the House of 
Commons. For, notwithstanding the weight and authority which 
is properly attached to the opinion of the House of Lords upon affairs 
of state, the fate of a minister does not depend upon a vote in that 
House. The Lords may sometimes thwart a ministry, reject or muti- 
late its measures, and even condemn its policy, but they are powerless 
to overthrow a ministry supported by the Commons or to uphold a 
ministry which the Commons have condemned. 3 But the verdict of 
the House of Commons itself derives its strength and efficacy from its 
being a true reflex of the intelligent will of the whole community. 
Until a vote of the Commons has been ratified by the constituent 
body, it will seldom be regarded as conclusively determining upon the 
existence of a ministry. When, in 1848, Sir Robert Peel was first in- 
formed of the overthrow of royalty in France and the proclamation 
of a republic, he shrewdly remarked : " This comes of trying to carry 
on a government by means of a mere majority of a chamber, without 
regard to the opinion out of doors." 4 

1 Ibid., p. 402, quoting authorities. 2 Ibid., p. 472. 

8 May, " Constitutional History," Vol. I., p. 467, quoted by Todd, Vol. 
II., p. 484. * Cobden, quoted by Todd, ibid., p. 486. 



90 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

As it is essential that the ministers of the Crown should possess the 
confidence of the popular chamber, so the loss of that confidence will 
necessitate their retirement from office. 1 The withdrawal of the con- 
fidence of the House of Commons from a ministry may be shown 
either (1), by a direct vote of want of confidence, or of censure for 
certain specified acts or omissions, or (2), by the rejection of some 
legislative measure proposed by ministers, the acceptance of which by 
Parliament they have declared to be of vital importance, or, on the 
other hand, by the determination of Parliament to enact a particular 
law contrary to the advice and consent of the administration. 2 

Especially stringent is the practice in relation to finance 
and taxation. 

When ministers assume the responsibility of stating that certain 
expenditure is necessary for the support of the civil government and 
the maintenance of the public credit at home and abroad, it is evi- 
dent that none can effectually challenge the proposed expenditure, to 
any material extent, unless they are prepared to take the responsibility 
of overthrowing the ministry. " No government could be worthy of 
its place if it permitted its estimates to be seriously resisted by the 
opposition, and important changes can be made therein only under 
circumstances which permit of the raising of the question of a change 
of government." 3 

After the defeat of ministers upon a vital question in 
the House of Commons there is but one alternative to 
their immediate resignation of office, — namely, a dissolu- 
tion of Parliament and an appeal to the constituent body. 
This alternative, however, is not constitutionally available 
at all times when a majority of the House of Commons 
has condemned a ministry. It is regarded as admissible 
only under certain limited circumstances, and with the 
express consent of the sovereign. Ministers who advise 
it do so under heavy responsibility. 

The prerogative of dissolution should be exercised with much dis- 
cretion and forbearance. Frequent, unnecessary, or abrupt dissolu- 

1 Todd, Vol. II. , p. 492. Under the English system, because the popular 
chamber makes the ministry ; but where the ministry are the agents of a 
president elected — as well as the chamber — by the people, the necessity 
is by no means so evident. 

2 ibid. 3 Ibid., quoting Mr. Gladstone, p. 502. 



v CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 91 

tions of Parliament " blunt the edge of a great instrument given to 
the Crown for its protection," and whenever they have occurred have 
always proved injurious to the state. 1 

It will form a fitting close to this chapter to quote from 
one of the latest speeches made in the House of Commons 
by Mr. J. S. Mill on the 17th of June, 1868. 

When a popular body knows what it is fit for and what it is unfit 
for, it will more and more understand that it is not its business to 
administer, but that it is its business to see that the administration is 
done by proper persons, and to keep them to their duties. I hope it 
will be more and more felt that the duty of this House is to put the 
right persons on the Treasury Bench, and when there to keep them 
to their work. Even in legislative business, it is the chief duty — it 
is more consistent with the capacity — of a popular assembly to see 
that the business is transacted by the most competent persons, confin- 
ing its own direct intervention to the enforcement of real discussion 
and publicity of the reasons offered pro and con : the offering of sug- 
gestions to those who do the work, and the imposition of a check upon 
them if they are disposed to do anything wrong. People will more 
value the importance of this principle the longer they have experience 
of it. 

1 Ibid., p. 507, quoting Peel. 



CHAPTER VI 

CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN (Continued) 

rMHE preceding chapter has been devoted to an analysis, 
-*- as far as possible in the words of English authorities, 
of that feature of the English political machinery known 
as the Cabinet — forming what Mr. Bagehot calls the con- 
necting link between the executive and the legislature. 

A cabinet is a combining committee — a hyphen which joins, a 
buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive 
part of the State. In its origin it belongs to the one ; in its functions 
it belongs to the other. 1 

We have next to consider the method and effects of the 
working of this institution in its actual operation. But 
before doing so it is desirable to examine another agency 
of government in the House of Commons, the Speaker, 
and this not only on its own account, but because of the 
difference of the functions which have grown up around 
the official of the same name in the Congress of the United 
States and the legislatures of the several states. 

The Speaker is the presiding officer of the House of Commons. 
He is chosen out of the members of the House itself, and the appoint- 
ment is confirmed by the Crown. He determines all points of order, 
that is, he decides whether a rule of the House with respect to its own 
proceedings exists or not, and whether it is being observed or not by 
any particular member in the course of a debate. When two or more 
members wish to speak at the same moment, he decides which of 
them shall be heard first. If the votes are equal in any case, he gives 
the casting vote, that is, decides which side shall prevail, but other- 
wise he does not vote. 

1 W. Bagehot, " English Constitution." The Cabinet. 
92 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 93 

The Speaker of the House is in every sense a most important and 
dignified officer. The tone and character of the debates of the House 
depend largely upon his judicial impartiality, knowledge of forms 
and precedents, and tact combined with courtesy of manner. If as a 
private member he has been identified with a party, he is required to 
divest himself of all party sympathies, and to concern himself only with 
the maintenance of the dignity and good order of the House. When 
he retires from office (which he generally holds from Parliament to 
Parliament as long as he pleases) he is usually created a peer. His 
salary is £5000. 1 

The last Speaker but one, Sir H. B. W. Brand, held 
the office from 1872 to 1884, and upon his retiring was 
made Viscount Hampden. 

If there is any one thing which has given to the British 
House of Commons the first rank among the parliamen- 
tary bodies of the world it is the position of the Speaker. 
Keeping himself studiously free from all interest either in 
the legislative or the executive work of the government, 
and in party movements of any kind, he devotes himself 
solely to the management of this large deliberative body 
in such a way that nobody can have a valid ground of 
complaint. And this attitude is preserved not merely by 
individuals, but by successive generations of Speakers. It 
was when Mr. Brand was Speaker, in the years 1881 and 
1882, that obstruction by the Irish members reached its 
highest point, and the subject of a forcible closure of 
debate was agitated. It is impossible to follow without 
admiration the attitude of the Speaker, the care taken to 
preserve the rights of the minority, and the dignity and 
restraint of procedure which prevented the lapse into mob 
violence. It may safely be asserted that the superiority 
of the English House of Commons over the French Cham- 
ber and the American House of Representatives is not 
owing to the character of individual members, but to the 
traditional respect for the Speaker's authority, supported 

1 Sheldon Amos, " A Primer of the English Constitution and Govern- 
ment." 



94 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

at once by the ministry and the leader of opposition. On 
the 25th of February, 1884, Mr. Gladstone, in moving a 
resolution of thanks to the retiring Speaker, Mr. Brand, 
observed : — 

As a witness to the labors of five Speakers, extending over more 
than half a century, I do not hesitate to say that the functions, always 
arduous, always grave, which are entrusted to the hands of Mr. 
Speaker, have risen, Sir, during the period of your occupation of the 
chair to a point both of gravity and difficulty entirely beyond what 
your predecessors have had to encounter, and but for the skill, tact, 
courage, firmness, and admirable understanding which you have ap- 
plied to the solution of the multitude of questions presented to you, 
those functions and the difficulties they present would have been 
graver still. 

Sir Stafford Northcote, on behalf of the opposition, cor- 
dially joined in seconding the motion, and thanked the 
Speaker for the manner in which during twelve anxious 
and laborious years he had filled the high office which he 
held. 

On Tuesday, February 26, Mr. Arthur Peel, successor 
of Mr. Brand, and holding office till 1895, being proposed, 
Mr. Rathbun quoted what Sir Robert Peel said of the 
Speaker sixty-five years before. 

Whatever may be his talents and attainments, I consider it abso- 
lutely necessary that he should possess the confidence of the House. 
That confidence no attainments may command, while we bow with 
deference to high integrity and lofty independence. 

Mr. Whitehead said : — 

He, indeed, would have been a poor observer of the House who had 
not seen what a vast influence the character of the Speaker exercises 
upon our proceedings, and who has not realized how essential it is for 
us to appoint a gentleman of high character and unsullied reputation. 
The whole House has recognized the tact, the patience, and the firm- 
ness required in that office, the strict impartiality and the cool judg- 
ment at a time when the minds of all men around are stirred in party 
debate. While we of the majority are entitled to look to the Speaker 
to see that the rules and the orders and the practice which govern our 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 95 

debates are not set aside or abused, the minority on the other hand 
should find in the Speaker their friend and best protector in the just 
exercise of their rights. No resolutions inscribed in our journals, no 
standing orders, no powers by statute, will for one moment avail a 
Speaker who has lost the confidence of the House. 1 

Mr. Peel was elected without opposition, a fact which, 
in view of the importance of the place as an object of 
ambition, speaks volumes for the discipline of the House 
on both sides under their respective leaders. 

On Tuesday, April 9, 1895, Mr. Peel retiring from 
office and being succeeded by Mr. Gully, Sir William 
Harcourt, in moving the usual resolutions of thanks to 
the Speaker, laid down what was expected from that 
officer. 

We expect dignity and authority, tempered by urbanity and kind- 
ness ; we look for firmness to control and persuasiveness to counsel ; 
we demand promptitude of decision and justness of judgment, tact, 
patience, and firmness ; a natural superiority combined with an inbred 
courtesy, so as to give by his own bearing an example and a model to 
those over whom he presides ; an impartial mind, a tolerant temper, 
a reconciling disposition in public and private as a friend and pru- 
dent counsellor. These are high and they are exacting demands, and 
in you, Sir, we have found them all fulfilled. 

Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, on behalf of the 
Conservatives, and Mr. Justin McCarthy and Mr. John 
Redmond, representing the Irish parties, were equally 
cordial. 2 

To return to the ministry. Three things are especially 
to be noticed : first, that the ministers from their posi- 
tion stand in the attitude of representing the nation as 
a whole, as distinguished from the parts. Every member 
of the House of Commons represents one 670th part of 
the whole nation, and that only. No one of them has 
any interest, or certainly any authority, to stand forth 

1 London Times report, February 26 and 27, 1884. 

2 London Spectator, April 13, 1895. 



96 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

as the guardian of the welfare of the whole against the 
claims of any other part or combination of parts. The 
ministry, on the other hand, as representatives of the 
Crown, that is, of the whole executive government, and 
responsible for it, are bound by their direct interest and 
are clothed with authority to see that the public interests 
are protected against the encroachments of those which are 
private and local. They cannot even devote themselves 
too exclusively to the interest of the majority, because, 
being personally subjected to public and constant criti- 
cism by members of the minority, they are held to take 
account of that outside public opinion, which is just as 
jealous, if not more so, of the rule of a majority as it is 
of that of individuals. In the second place, the require- 
ment that all public bills shall be framed by the ministry, 
or under their direction and responsibility, exercises a 
steadying effect and prevents that looseness of legisla- 
tion which becomes a habit when bills or amendments 
can be moved by any member at his pleasure, or even 
by committees of members, especially as neither member 
nor committee can be in any way held responsible for the 
effect of laws upon administration. Thirdly, when the 
conduct of legislation as well as administration is in 
the hands of ministers, measures become identified with 
men, and, as has been already observed, 1 the enthusiasm 
of the few who can understand the measures is combined 
and strengthened with the enthusiasm of the many who 
can only understand the men. 

An illustration of these points will best be found in 
a brief history of perhaps the most important political 
change accomplished in Great Britain since the Revolu- 
tion of 1688, namely, the parliamentary reform of 1832. 
It is curious to note that the Long Parliament proposed 
a redistribution of the representation much upon the 
1 See ante, Chap. III., p. 42. 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 97 

principles of the act of 1832, and, considering the times, 
upon a much more radical basis, and that the plan was 
subsequently adopted by Cromwell in summoning the 
Parliament of 1654. According to Clarendon, — 

It was not thought an ill temperament, and was then generally 
looked upon as an alteration fit to be more warrantably made and at 
a better time. 1 

It was swept away, however, in the reaction of the 
Restoration, and the question did not again emerge into 
daylight till 1745, after the rebellion in Scotland, when a 
proposal for improved representation was negatived with- 
out a division. In 1766 we find Mr. Pitt, in a speech 
against the American Stamp Act, saying of the borough 
representation, — 

This is what is called the rotten part of the Constitution. It cannot 
continue a century. If it does not drop it must be amputated. 2 

And again, as Earl of Chatham in the House of Lords, 
on the 22d of January, 1770, he spoke at length in 
advocacy of parliamentary reform. The first movement 
from the outside was made in 1776 by Wilkes's bill 
for disfranchising rotten boroughs and enfranchising 
Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, and other 
rich and populous trading towns. His scheme, indeed, 
comprised all the leading principles of parliamentary 
reform which were advocated during the next fifty years 
without success. Several attempts were made in the same 
direction by Mr. Pitt in 1782-1785, and by Mr. Flood in 
1790. In April, 1792, Mr. —afterwards Earl— Grey began 
that long struggle which in after years brought such great 
honor to his name. His motion in the following year was 
supported by a vast number of petitions, and among them 
by one of extraordinary length and ability from the 

1 The "History of England since 1830," by W. N. Molesworth, 
Vol. I., p. 3. «im, p. 7. 



98 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

" Society of the Friends of the People," so complete and 
masterly an analysis of the parliamentary system that 
it became almost the text and manifesto of the future 
struggle. The motion, which was merely for inquiry, 
was unceremoniously rejected. 1 All these attempts were 
frustrated, in part by the will of the king and in part 
by the private interests which wielded a majority in Par- 
liament. Then came the French Revolution, and the 
consequent panic in Great Britain, which, with the life- 
and-death struggle with Napoleon, postponed all effort 
for reform for a quarter of a century. With the return 
of peace, however, all the grievances and abuses which 
had been accumulating for a century and a half came to 
a head. First came the question of Catholic emancipa- 
tion, which, of course, in the first instance mainly affected 
Ireland. The overwhelming majority of the inhabitants 
of that country were Roman Catholics, but the law placed 
the whole political power in the hands of the Protestant 
minority, not only excluding the Catholics from almost 
every office of trust and power, but preventing them 
from sending representatives of their own faith to the 
imperial Parliament. A strong and growing feeling of 
the iniquity of this state of things filled the minds of the 
oppressed majority, and many Protestants in Ireland, as 
well as in England, were convinced of the injustice and 
impolicy of these odious and invidious disabilities, and 
desired their abolition. The police, which was neces- 
sarily composed of Catholics, shared the prevailing 
passions and discontent. The Irish soldiers, who formed 
no inconsiderable portion of the British army, and were 
Catholics almost to a man, had been tampered with by 
the malcontents and could not be relied on in case of an 
insurrection. A Catholic association had been formed, 
and under the lead of Daniel O'Connell had placed itself 

1 James Routledge, " Popular Progress in England," p. 183. 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 99 

at the head of one of the most formidable agitations that 
had ever been carried on in any country. 1 On the other 
hand, the Protestant minority in Ireland was closely allied 
with the English aristocracy, and determined to yield no 
jot of their privileges, while behind them the kings, both 
George III. and George IV., regarded themselves as 
bound by their coronation oath to resist any change in 
this respect, and exacted pledges from their ministers to 
do the same. 

Then there was the question of agricultural distress. 
The wars with Napoleon had produced abundant suffering, 
but the landed interest had profited greatly by them. As 
long as they continued, it had enjoyed an almost complete 
monopoly, which caused a great rise of the profits of the 
farmer and the rents of the landlord. But the return of 
peace put an end to this monopoly, and the consequence 
was an immediate fall of rents and profits, attended by 
great agricultural distress. Instead, however, of accept- 
ing this necessity and endeavoring to accommodate them- 
selves to it, the dominant landed interest made the preva- 
lent distress a pretext for protecting, as it was termed, 
British agriculture by duties on the importation of foreign 
grain. 2 This law relieved the agricultural interest at the 
expense of almost every other interest in the nation. But 
these had their own burdens besides resulting from the 
cessation of the vast war expenditure of the government, 
and their resentment was bitter and deep. All the other 
distress was aggravated by the condition of the poor laws, 
which, by eking out insufficient wages with public sup- 
port, had covered the land with able-bodied paupers and 
sturdy mendicants, and made it impossible for the honest 
and industrious to earn a support for themselves and their 
families. 

On the 16th of August, 1819, a great meeting was held 

i W. N. Molesworth, op. cit.. Vol. I., p. 26. 2 Ibid, p. 13. 



100 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

in a large field near Manchester, where the Free Trade 
Hall now stands, for the purpose of petitioning the House 
of Commons for reform. It was computed that at least 
eighty thousand persons were present. The club ban- 
ners bore the devices: "Universal Suffrage," "Annual 
Parliaments," " Vote by Ballot ; " but the real object was 
cheap bread through the repeal of the corn laws. While 
the meeting was proceeding, a body of mounted yeomanry 
arrived and after some preliminary altercation rode at the 
crowd, cutting their helpless and unresisting victims with 
their swords, or trampling them under the feet of their 
horses. Altogether, between three and four hundred per- 
sons were cut or otherwise injured. It was noted that 
the troops of the line which were at hand acted with 
mingled coolness and firmness, and inflicted no injury 
whatever on the crowd. • The harm was done by the 
militia, the neighbors, and who should have been the 
friends, of the crowd. 

The effect of these events was to increase the alarm and exaspera- 
tion which prevailed on both sides. The government brought into 
Parliament an array of bills giving them power to seize arms, suppress 
drilling, punish seditious libels, and employ other coercive measures. 
These bills were carried by large majorities, while every motion for 
inquiring into the distress of the people was voted down by the sup- 
porters of the ministry. 1 

At the opening of the year 1830, matters seemed to be 
at their worst. 

Trade, manufactures, agriculture, — all w r ere stagnated. Many 
parishes were reduced to such a state of pauperism that the whole of 
the property within their limits was insufficient for the maintenance 
of their poor; and assistance had to be sought from neighboring 
parishes, already overburdened with the expense of supporting their 
own paupers. Landlords could not obtain their rents ; farmers were 
impoverished; the agricultural laborer, whose wages were eked out 
from the poor rates, received just enough to enable him to procure 
for his family and himself the barest necessaries of life. The manu- 

1 Molesworth, op. cit., Vol. I., pp. 18-21. 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 101 

facturing operatives of Lancashire and Yorkshire were in many- 
instances receiving only threepence a day for more than twelve hours' 
labor. O'Connell stated in the House of Commons that in Ireland 
seven thousand persons were subsisting on threepence a day. 1 

Upon this state of things came the French Revolution 
of July, which, in the strained relations of classes and 
with the memories of the years 1789-1795, furnished a 
powerful stimulus of hatred and fear. It was felt on all 
sides that the only hope of relief lay in a reform of Parlia- 
ment. Great cities, such as Manchester, Birmingham, 
and Sheffield, of growing importance, had no representa- 
tion, while the food of their starving operatives was 
maintained at an artificial price by the landowners, who 
controlled Parliament through their pocket boroughs. 

Under these circumstances, how was it that civil war 
and violent revolution, after the French fashion, were 
averted ? There can be no hesitation in answering that 
the element of safety consisted in an executive ministry, 
standing between Parliament and the Crown on the one 
hand and the nation on the other, and occupying the 
position of official mediators. In all cases of quarrel, 
whether between individuals or bodies of men, the first 
thing for the preservation of peace is to find out exactly 
what they disagree about, and for that purpose to have an 
agent or negotiator in whom both sides have confidence.' 
Blind exasperation, venting itself in abuse and recrimina- 
tion, is pretty sure to lead to blows. But if both sides 
can be brought to state exactly what it is that they want, 
this is in itself a sobering process and renders possible an 
examination whether there is any available basis of com- 
promise. In the case under consideration, the first object 
was to place a ministry in power who would take up the 
subject of reform. To get such a ministry was a question 
of voting and not of violence, and for that purpose action 

1 Ibid., p. 39. 



102 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

upon public opinion was necessary, which again was to be 
brought about by agitation, indeed, but of a peaceful 
kind. In July of 1830 a general election took place, and 
the new Parliament met in October, under the influence 
of the recent revolution in France, to meet a ministry, led 
by the Duke of Wellington, in declared opposition both 
to Catholic emancipation and to parliamentary reform. 
Free speech and a free press, with the public reporting of 
debates, were, however, too much even for a Parliament 
of which the majority were representatives of a few indi- 
viduals or close corporations, generally selling their right 
of nomination for a valuable consideration. In November 
the ministry were defeated on a different question, and 
sent in their resignation. The king, William IV., sent 
for Earl Grey, whose name had been for so many years 
identified with the reform of Parliament, and who accepted 
office on condition that this should be made a cabinet 
question. The first stage of the conflict had passed, and 
the next was to turn upon the measure of reform. If it 
had been open to every member of the House of Commons 
to propose a bill, and had been left to committees of the 
House to decide upon the merits of each, it would have 
been easy to postpone the subject indefinitely by propos- 
ing amendments and by the process known in the United 
States as "lobbying." But safety was found again in the 
principle which we have seen in the last chapter : that in 
all public affairs the preparation of bills is left exclusively 
to the ministry upon their responsibility to the House and 
the country. Earl Grey intrusted the preparation of the 
government measure to a committee, of which Lord John 
Russell was a member, and his plan was adopted by the 
committee. 

Meantime, as the knowledge of the government action spread 
through the country, the strain at the Home Office abated for a time. 
Politics came in as a counter irritant, and agitation in the social form 



ti CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 103 

it first assumed began to subside. There was not less suffering but 
the people were more hopeful. They knew, in a general way, that it 
was proposed to make a great change in the House of Commons. If 
that change could be brought about, surely it would be possible to 
make good laws and get rid of the evils from which the nation suf- 
fered. Hence, attention everywhere was fixed on the Reform Bill. 
It became a symbol of hope to those who felt the pinch of want. By 
some process, not very clearly comprehended, it was to act as a uni- 
versal remedy. 1 

The bill, and nothing but the bill, was the tenor of the 
cry which arose on every side. The public feeling was 
raised to a high pitch of excitement, and it was felt that 
if anything went wrong with the bill serious events might 
happen. 

The bill which Lord John Russell brought in on the 1st of March, 
1831, began a battle which lasted, without cessation, till the 5th of 
June, 1832. On the 21st of March it was read a second time by a 
majority of one, but a defeat in Committee of the Whole decided the 
ministers to advise a dissolution. The interview at which Earl Grey 
and Lord Brougham tendered this advice would suggest a scene for 
the stage. The king fumed and his eye flashed with anger as he 
learned the preparations which had been made for his going down to 
the House, including even the ordering out of the Life Guards. His 
prerogative was doubly assailed. Ministers had dared to assume that 
he would do as they advised him, and they had even presumed to 
give orders to the army without his authority. But he went all the 
same. The House of Lords was in a state of tumult as the Tower 
guns announced the king's approach. The ministerial decision had 
taken the peers by surprise. They dreaded an appeal to the country, 
and sincerely believed that they were standing on the brink of a 
revolution. 

The new Parliament met after a short interval, and a second re- 
form bill was introduced. Ministers were now all-powerful in the 
House of Commons. The bill was read a third time by a majority 
of 106, and on October 3 the second reading began in the House of 
Lords. It was thrown out by a majority of 41, and the country was 
brought at once to the verge of civil war. The restless spirits who 
hang on to the skirts of every popular movement were eager for mis- 
chief. Nottingham Castle was set on fire. Bristol was for three days 
in the hands of the mob. These and similar outbreaks were speedily 
suppressed. There was much greater difficulty in dealing with the 

1 Dunckley, "Life of Lord Melbourne." 



104 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Birmingham Political Union and the mighty force of public opinion 
which it embodied. The members were giving themselves a military 
organization. They professed to be peaceful in their aims, but had 
pledged themselves to pay no taxes unless the king would create as 
many peers as were necessary to pass the bill, and they might any 
day turn out into the streets an army ready for action. The move- 
ment, moreover, was extending. Unions were being formed in Lon- 
don. They were advised to carry arms, and were beginning to call 
themselves the National Guard. By the steady administration of 
Lord Melbourne at the Home Office danger was kept at bay till the 
success of an adverse motion, by Lord Lyndhurst, threw out a third 
bill, led to the resignation of ministers, and brought the Duke of 
Wellington into power for three days. When the duke seemed to be 
preparing to take the revolution in hand, and the soldiers in the 
barracks at Birmingham were sharpening their swords for what 
might happen, the danger seemed extreme, but it disappeared when 
the ministry were reinstated in office and the passing of the bill was 
rendered certain by the consent of the king to create peers, should it 
be found necessary. 1 

The House of Lords had no mind to see their privileged 
order swamped with new creations of Liberal peers and 
yielded. With the royal assent to the bill England 
passed without violent revolution from the Middle Ages 
to the nineteenth century. It is impossible to insist too 
strongly upon the fact that this was not because she had a 
population less exasperated or less determined than that 
of France, or an aristocracy less selfish or less obstinate, 
but because of that feature of her political machinery 
which admitted of reducing all the suffering and all the dis- 
content of a nation to two simple issues to be answered by 
" Yes " or " No." The first was whether a ministry should 
be placed in power pledged to deal with the subject ; and 
the second, the framing by that ministry of a measure 
which, though extremely complex in itself, and understood 
by very few of the people, was accepted by the whole 
nation as the embodiment of their demands, and was 
forced upon the aristocracy b}^ the combined weight of 

1 Dunckley, op. cit. 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 105 

public opinion, until, seeing the exact nature of the sacri- 
fice demanded, they were compelled to give way. We 
shall have occasion to consider hereafter what was in an 
analogous case the effect of the absence of such machin- 
ery. 1 

It would not be possible, within the limits of this work, 
to follow all the achievements of a reformed Parliament 
under the guidance of an executive ministry. But there 
is one department which cannot be overlooked. An Aus- 
trian statesman is said to have once remarked, " Show me 
good finance, and I will show you good politics," and 
British national finance for sustained skill of management 
during half a century is perhaps without parallel in the 
history of the world. 

Sir Robert Peel became first lord of the treasury in 
1841. The position of the head of the finances, whether 
called by that name, or, as has since become more custom- 
ary, by that of chancellor of the exchequer, is well indi- 
cated in the words of his biographer. 

Except by a few, Peel was little loved and scarcely understood, 
but by all he was honored and felt to be necessary. He was, there- 
fore, punctually obeyed, and had his colleagues and his followers as 
well disciplined as the crew of a man-of-war. The Opposition had 
been very pressing to know by what expedients Peel meant to restore 
order in the affairs of the country. Peel answered every such demand 
by saying that he must have time to gather information and to mature 
his plans. 2 

The principle of his finance was very simple. In 
every one of the last five years there had been a deficit, 
and the total of these deficits amounted to £8,000,000. 
It was known that unless a remedy was applied the 
current year would add to this sum total a fresh deficit 
of .£2,500,000. The old familiar remedy was to add 
a little to each of many indirect taxes, but this remedy 

1 Post, Chap. XIX. 

2 "Life of Sir Robert Peel," by F. C. Montague, Chap. VIII. 



106 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

had been lately tried in vain, because in a time of 
distress every increase of a tax diminishes consumption. 
The tariff comprised some twelve hundred articles, and 
the cost of collecting the duties absorbed most of the 
product. Peel's plan was to put on in time of peace the 
income tax, hitherto used only during war, and thus not 
only to cover the deficit, but to secure a surplus to use 
in simplifying other taxation. The income tax has ever 
since been maintained, and taxation so simplified that the 
customs are raised entirely from a few large articles, 
either such, as are not produced in the country at all, 
like tea, coffee, and tobacco, or else, as with wine and 
spirits, where the customs duties are offset by an internal 
excise. The wisdom of using surpluses to relieve taxa- 
tion instead of paying off debt is proved by the greatly 
increased facility with which the nation carries the debt. 
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that by postponing 
payment of the debt the British nation has saved the full 
equivalent of its amount in its reduced proportion to 
the national wealth ; and yet there has taken place a 
gradual and steady reduction of the debt, which, from 
£885,000,000 in 1816, has fallen to less than £652,000,000 
at the present time. The annual budget is calculated and 
balanced with an accuracy unequalled by any other nation. 
In April of each year the chancellor of the exchequer lays 
before Parliament his estimate of revenue and expenditure 
for the ensuing year, rarely differing by more than one- 
quarter to one per cent, and compares the result of the 
closed annual accounts with the estimate of the preceding 
year, again rarely differing by more than one-half or one 
per cent. If there is a surplus, he states his intention 
to take off or add to certain items of taxation, or to apply 
a proportion to the reduction of debt. Although the 
Opposition is always watching for opportunities to criti- 
cise the government in its finance, as well as in any other 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 107 

particular, yet the men to whom the work is intrusted 
are of such proved ability and high reputation that a 
government has of late years seldom been defeated upon 
questions of finance. 

Among the first financial questions to be dealt with 
by the reformed Parliament was that of the corn laws, 
by which the price of food for the manufacturing towns 
was artificially maintained in the interest of the land- 
owners, and a battle raged over it almost as fierce as 
that over parliamentary reform itself. As before, the 
issue was to get a ministry pledged to deal with the ques- 
tion, an object attained in this instance by the conversion 
of Sir Robert Peel himself. It brought upon him great 
obloquy from the members of his party, but so severe is 
the test to which an English statesman is exposed, that 
few persons ever questioned the sincerity of his motives. 

Sir Robert Peel, one year upholding the corn laws as the perfection 
of human wisdom, and another year talking of sweetening the bread 
of the poor by taking from that bread the bad seasoning of injustice, 
is a fine example of a grave and conscientious statesman following, 
not leading, public opinion. 1 

So firmly fixed is the basis of British finance by its 
being placed in the hands of a single national and respon- 
sible head, that, while almost all the governments of the 
world are at this moment engaged in a rivalry as to which 
shall tax its subjects most for the benefit of private inter- 
ests by excluding the competition of foreigners, Great 
Britain alone maintains an unwavering adhesion to the 
principles of free trade which she has thus worked out, 
and any proposal to depart from them is received with 
general scorn. We shall have occasion to appreciate the 
value of this financial machinery by comparison with 
others constructed on a different plan. 

Speaking generally, the functions of the ministry may 

1 J. Routledge, " Popular Progress in England," p. 586. 



108 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

be said to consist, in the first place, in the conduct and 
guidance of parliamentary business, which is just as much 
executive work as administration itself. A body of five 
or six hundred men, all perfectly equal and without any 
officers, can no more carry on business successfully, than 
a regiment of privates can go into battle under the same 
conditions with any hope of victory. If every member can 
with equal authority introduce any number of measures 
upon any number of subjects, intelligent selection and 
treatment of them become impossible, and the result is 
simply anarchy. In the next place, it is this conduct of 
business by the ministry, the taking up of different ques- 
tions with system and order, which renders possible that 
public discussion which forms public opinion and brings 
the will of the people to bear. With a great and hetero- 
geneous mass of business deprived of such conduct, the 
main force of the struggle is expended in deciding by 
sheer will of a majority what questions shall be taken up, 
and the same will of the majority is then applied to set- 
tling them without discussion. Again, it is the public 
discussion rendered possible by ministerial action which 
admits of the projection of individuality. In the confused 
struggle for supremacy among a mass of equals, rule by 
majority is the objective point. The most marked char- 
acteristic is jealousy of individual superiority and the 
suppression by common consent of that basis of personal 
enthusiasm which is the most effective of all instruments 
for moving multitudes of men. But the advantage of 
ministerial action in a legislature which needs most to be 
insisted on is the presentation and defence of the public 
interest as against the private and local interests repre- 
sented by members. We shall find abundant illustra- 
tions of these points when we come to consider represent- 
ative government without a ministry. 1 It is sufficient, 

i See post, Chaps. XVII.-XIX. 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 109 

though essential, at this time, to lay stress upon their 
importance. 

We have thus far dwelt upon the merits of the British 
ministerial system, and we have now to consider the draw- 
backs, of which some are inseparable from every human 
institution. Mr. Bagehot may be quoted as a certainly 
not unfavorable witness. Speaking of changes of ministry 
he says : — 

All our administrations go out together. The whole executive gov- 
ernment changes — at least all the heads of it change — in a body, and 
at every such change some speculators are sure to exclaim that such a 
habit is foolish. They say, " No doubt Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Russell 
may have been wrong about reform ; no doubt Mr. Gladstone may 
have been cross in the House of Commons ; but why should either or 
both of these events change all the heads of all our practical depart- 
ments ? What could be more absurd than what happened in 1858 ? 
Lord Palmerston was for once in his life over-buoyant ; he gave rude 
answers to stupid inquiries ; he brought into the Cabinet a nobleman 
concerned in an ugly trial about a woman ; he or his foreign secretary 
did not answer a French despatch by a despatch, but told our ambas- 
sador to reply orally. And because of these trifles, or at any rate 
these isolated un administrative mistakes, all our administration had 
fresh heads. The Poor Law Board had a new chief, the Home De- 
partment a new chief, the Public Works a new chief. Surely this was 
absurd." Now is this objection good or bad ? Speaking generally, is 
it wise so to change all our rulers ? 

The practice produces three great evils. First, it brings in on a 
sudden new persons and untried persons to preside over our policy. 
A little while ago Lord Cranborne had no more idea that he would 
now be Indian secretary than that he would be a bill broker. He had 
never given any attention to Indian affairs ; he can get them up be- 
cause he is an able, educated man who can get up anything. But they 
are not " part and parcel " of his mind, not his subjects of familiar 
reflection, nor things of which he thinks by predilection, of which he 
cannot help thinking. But because Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone did 
not please the House of Commons about reform, there he is. A per- 
fectly inexperienced man, so far as Indian affairs go, rules all our Indian 
empire. And if all of our heads of offices change together, so very 
frequently it must be. If twenty offices are vacant at once, there are 
almost never twenty tried, competent, clever men ready to take them. 
The difficulty of making up a government is very much like the diffi- 
culty of putting together a Chinese puzzle : the spaces do not suit 



110 



THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 



<^A 



what you have to put into them. And the difficulty of matching a 
ministry is more than that of fitting a puzzle, because the ministers 
to be put in can object, though the bits of a puzzle cannot. One ob- 
jector can throw out the combination. In 1847 Lord Grey would not 
join Lord John Russell's projected government if Lord Palmerston 
was to be foreign secretary ; Lord Palmerston would be foreign sec- 
retary, and so the government was not formed. The cases in which a 
single refusal prevents a government are rare, and there must be many 
concurrent circumstances to make it effectual. But the cases in which 
refusals impair or spoil a government are very common. It almost 
never happens that a ministry maker can put into offices exactly 
whom he would like ; a number of place men are always too proud, 
too eager, or too obstinate to go just where they should. 

Again, this system not only makes new ministers ignorant, but 
keeps present ministers indifferent. A man cannot take the same 
interest that he might in his work if he knows that by events over 
which he has no control, by errors in which he had no share, by 
metamorphoses of opinion which belong to a different sequence of 
phenomena, he may have to leave that work in the middle, and may 
very likely never return to it. The new man put into a fresh office 
ought to have the best motive to learn his task thoroughly, but in 
fact in England he has not at all the best motive. The last wave of 
party and politics brought him there; the next may take him away. 
Young and eager men take, even at this disadvantage, a keen 
interest in office work, but most men, especially old men, hardly do 
so. Many a battered minister may seem to think much more of 
the vicissitudes which make him and unmake him than of any office 
matter. 

Lastly, a sudden change of ministers may easily cause a mis- 
chievous change of policy. In many matters of business, perhaps 
in most, a continuity of mediocrity is better than a hotch-potch of 
excellencies. For example, now that progress in the scientific arts is 
revolutionizing the instruments of war, rapid changes in our head 
preparers for land and sea war are most costly and most hurtful. A 
single competent selector of new inventions would probably in the 
course of years, after some experience, arrive at something tolerable ; 
it is in the nature of steady, regular, experimenting ability to dimin- 
ish, if not to vanquish, such difficulties. But a quick succession of 
chiefs has no similar facility. They do not learn from each other's 
experience ; you might as well expect the new head boy in a public 
school to learn from the experience of the last head boy. The most 
valuable result of many years is a nicely balanced mind instinctively 
heedful of various errors ; but such a mind is the incommunicable gift 
of individual experience, and an outgoing minister can no more leave 
it to his successor than an elder brother can pass it on to a younger.^ 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 111 

Thus a desultory and incalculable policy may follow from a rapid 
change of ministers. 1 

Mr. Bagehot then attempts with moderate success to 
refute these arguments, his main point being that the 
peculiarities mentioned are essential to parliamentary 
government, — which as regards English parliamentary- 
government is undoubtedly true. The English ministry 
is practically elected by the parliamentary majority, and 
is dependent upon that majority for existence. Its main 
strength must therefore be directed to maintaining that 
majority, while its appeal to public opinion is only indi- 
rect. For the same reason neither men nor measures ever 
get an expression of opinion from the nation as a whole, 
but only through a multitude of separate elections by dis- 
tricts. Again, the prime minister is not formally elected 
even by the House of Commons. His outgoing predeces- 
sor advises the queen to ask him, as the most prominent 
man in opposition, to form a ministry. He does this by 
inviting certain other men, as independent as himself, to 
join with him. He has no authority over them, nor they 
over each other. It is a purely voluntary association, of 
which each member makes it a condition that he shall be 
supported, that is, if he is in danger of being forced by 
an adverse majority to resign, the other members of the 
ministry shall make their resignation a consequence of 
his, notwithstanding that there may be involved only a 
question relating specially to his department. It is a case 
of unstable equilibrium. Not to speak disrespectfully, the 
ministry is like a company of men who, after excessive 
conviviality, are able to stand upright only by holding on 
to each other. 

Moreover, the defeat and resignation of the ministry 
may occur at any time, and so they form a subject of con- 
stant effort and watchfulness on the part of the Opposi- 

1 W. Bagehot, op. cit., No. VI. 



112 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tion, while a dissolution and a general election are equally 
matters of uncertainty. In the statement above quoted 
Mr. Bagehot treats of frequent and of sudden changes of 
ministry as being one and the same thing, whereas in fact 
they are quite different. This constant attack and defence 
further require a tight drawing of party lines and disci- 
pline. If there is one thing, however, that has followed 
upon the wide extension of suffrage, it is the loosening of 
party ties. In the old days of Whigs and Tories, when 
society and political power were sharply divided between 
those who were interested in and strove to maintain ex- 
isting conditions and those who demanded change, party 
was a much more coherent force ; but now that the 
electorate is counted by millions with an almost infinite 
variety of aspirations, the names Liberal and Conservative 
are much less clearly defined and less powerful as a 
working machinery. More, perhaps, than ever before, 
unless in time of war, which always brings individuals 
to the front, political forces are identified with leaders 
like Mr. Gladstone and the Marquis of Salisbury, while 
there is a failure in the guidance of and response by 
public opinion from the fact that these leaders do not and 
cannot appeal directly to the mass of the people, but 
only through Parliament to the separate constituencies. 
English writers have not failed to notice this change. 

Prior to the Reform Act of 1832 party organization seldom failed 
to secure an adequate support in Parliament for the existing admin- 
istration. But the large reduction in the number of placemen and 
steady supporters of government in the House of Commons, con- 
sequent upon the abolition of treasury nomination boroughs, and the 
insubordination of new members of the Reformed Parliament to party 
leaders rendered government by party increasingly difficult. Again 
the rapid and entire change of opinion which was exhibited by Sir 
Robert Peel in the settlement of the corn law question in 1846, a 
change which he refrained from communicating beforehand even to 
the leading members of the Conservative party, gave a further shock 
to the old system from which it has never fully recovered ; thereby 



vi CABINET GOVERNMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 113 

rendering the repeal of the corn laws a landmark not only in our 
economical bat also in our constitutional history. Moreover, as the 
other great questions which of old divided the Whigs and Tories into 
hostile camps were disposed of and as the bulk of the nation began in 
consequence of the spread of education to take a deeper interest in 
matters of political concern, the number of independent members has 
naturally and inevitably increased until it has become exceedingly 
difficult for any party to secure a reliable working majority in the 
House of Commons. 

Nor is it the government alone that suffers from the decline of 
party organization: the Opposition, likewise, are no longer subject 
as of old to the direction of one acknowledged chief, and it is not 
uncommon nowadays to witness an opposition in Parliament split up 
into different factions, each carrying on a sort of guerilla warfare in 
its own way. 1 

It will not be without interest to quote, in addition, the 
words of a foreign observer upon this point. 

The tremendous difficulty of gaining for every important measure 
the consent of many hundred intelligent, influential, and independent 
men, causes a clumsiness in a government by party, which only Eng- 
lish energy, with its party discipline in the form of a cabinet, has, in 
the course of two generations, overcome. Real progress, even in this 
more practicable form, is difficult enough even at the present day, 
and every iuitiated person knows what difficulties, now as formerly, 
the apparently omnipotent prime minister has to overcome, not only 
above and below, but also in the circle of his own colleagues, before he 
succeeds in inducing a cabinet of a dozen capable men, every one of 
whom has his own system, his own past, and his own future, to unite 
in adopting resolutions. That eternal problem, how, in a free state, 
to blend the diversities of individual wills together into one united 
and single will of the state, is concentrated in an English cabinet as 
in a focus. 2 

England, too, will experience the fact that the transition to the 
new order of industrial society is brought about through a process of 
dissolution of the old cohesions, upon which the constitution of Par- 
liament is based. The unrepresented social mass, which is now un- 
ceasingly flooding the substructure of the English Constitution, will 
only stay its course at a universal suffrage and a thorough and arith- 
metical equalization of the constituencies, and will thus attempt, and 
in great measure achieve, a further dissolution of the elective bodies. 

1 Todd, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 413, quoting authorities. 

2 Gneist, " History of the English Constitution," Vol. II., note to p. 431. 



114 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, vi 

To meet the coming storm, a certain fusion of the old parties seems to 
be immediately requisite, though the propertied classes, in defending 
their possessions, will certainly not at first display their best qualities. 
As, further, a regular formation in two parties cannot be kept up, a 
splitting up into fractions, as in the parliaments of the Continent, will 
ensue, and the changing of the ministry will modify itself accordingly, 
so that the Crown will no longer be able to commit the helm of the 
state in simple alternation to the leader of the one or the other ma- 
jority. And then a time may recur in which the King in Council 
may have to undertake the actual leadership. 1 

The full importance of these remarks will be seen when 
we come to treat of a government in which, instead of a 
king or queen ruling by hereditary succession, who must 
be either a despot or a cipher, and wholly beyond the ex- 
pression of any popular feeling except loyalty, we find a 
chief magistrate elected practically by the direct vote of 
the whole nation for a limited period ; such a magistrate 
holding, during that interval, an almost despotic power, 
but as a trust for which he is held responsible to the 
great mass of public opinion under the enforcement of a 
watchful legislature ; and having the power of appoint- 
ment and dismissal of all his ministers, who are, therefore, 
wholly independent of a party majority, though both 
legislature and executive appeal to the arbitration of 
the people at fixed intervals. If it shall be found that 
the failures of such a government are owing mainly, if 
not entirely, to the exclusion of the cabinet ministers from 
seats in and participation in the business of the legisla- 
ture, and it shall further appear that all the advantages of 
the cabinet government which has achieved such results 
in Great Britain can be equally secured under these differ- 
ent conditions, so much may at least be said, that there 
may be presented to the world a phase of popular govern- 
ment such as it has never yet seen. 

1 Gneist, op. cit., pp. 452, 453. 



CHAPTER VII 

FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 

TF we cross the narrow strip of sea which separates 
-*- Great Britain from the continent of Europe the cur- 
tain rises upon a different scene. The last word has by- 
no means yet been said as to the French Revolution of 
1789 and its results. The horror which it inspired has 
been softened by the lapse of years, and men are more dis- 
posed to study its real meaning in a philosophical spirit. 
A notable instance of this is the work of Mr. H. Morse 
Stephens, which marks a great change in the English 
point of view. Setting apart the previous wars of the 
old French monarchy, it may be doubted whether the 
amount of human suffering, caused in France in the years 
1789 to 1795 by the direct and conscious action of man, 
apart from the consequences of political mistakes, was at 
all to be compared with that caused, even to Germans, by 
the German invasion of France in 1870-71, especially if 
we include the fate of the thousands of widows and or- 
phans thereby created. Yet this event is hailed by all 
Germany as a glorious triumph, and the rest of the world 
is rather disposed to admit the claim. That a king or 
emperor should send a half-million of men to slaughter 
and destruction is regarded as quite in the natural course 
of history. It is only when a convention of nameless men 
orders the beheading of a king and queen, and a peasantry 
pillages and burns the castles of a few thousands of lords 
and gentlemen, that the vials of wrath are poured out. 
A very general impression prevails that the difference 

115 



116 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

in the modern history of Great Britain and France is 
almost wholly owing to the difference in the character of 
the peoples. It would be idle to deny that there is some 
foundation for this, but it may fairly be maintained that 
this cause is much less important than is generally sup- 
posed. It is the old and vexed question of heredity as 
against circumstance and education. For obvious reasons 
it is not possible to carry on experiments with regard to 
individuals, but with nations the case is quite different. 
A variety of treatment for one, two, or three hundred 
years may change fundamentally the character of institu- 
tions and with them of races. There are two things 
which have thus modified English history, — the absence of 
foreign wars and of an alien religion. 

On the continent of Europe the introduction of standing armies and 
the revolution in the art of war, which made it a " distinct science 
and a distinct trade," had emancipated rulers from the chief restraint 
on their power — the fear of an armed people — and enabled them to 
either utterly sweep away or reduce to empty formalities the national 
assemblies, which had once been as free and as potent as our own 
early parliaments. The free constitutions of Castile and Arragon 
were successively overthrown by Charles V. and Philip II. 1 

From the time of the Norman conquest there has never 
been an invasion of British soil by a foreign army ; and 
only once, at the time of the Spanish Armada, has there 
been any serious fear of it. Wars there have been, car- 
ried on abroad by English men and money, but always as 
a kind of amateur work, limited, besides all else, by trans- 
portation by sea. The nation could therefore at any time 
compel the king to abandon a war by refusing supplies, 
and was not itself forced by the necessities of self-pres- 
ervation to surrender its liberties into the hands of a 
despotic ruler. Henry VII., when he succeeded to the 
throne after the wars of the Roses, was sufficiently despotic 
in temper. 

1 Taswell-Langmead, op. cit., pp. 363, 364. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 117 

Throughout his reign of twenty-four years he summoned Parlia- 
ment only seven times, and during the last thirteen years only once, 
in 1504 — always to obtain money. 1 

But he had not at command the expedients employed 
about the same time by Louis XI. to undermine the 
power of the French nobility, a process which was fear- 
fully accelerated by the Italian wars of Charles VIII. and 
Louis XII. Moreover, Henry VII., as well as Henry 
VIII. and Elizabeth, was born of native parents and 
English in feeling and sympathies. The nation was 
saved from such a curse as the importation of Catherine 
de Medicis. When, in the later generations, the blood of 
the Guises and of Henrietta Maria made its appearance in 
the Stuarts, the power of Parliament had become suffi- 
ciently established to sustain the conflict. Strafford and 
Laud corresponded in character and purpose with Riche- 
lieu and Mazarin, but the foundation laid in the two coun- 
tries by the work of the previous one hundred and fifty 
years was wholly different. Parliament had continued 
steadily to exert its power and maintain its strength, so 
that it was able to carry the nation through the long 
struggle from the accession of Charles I. to that of Wil- 
liam III., and was then saved from the consequences of its 
own weakness by the development of cabinet government, 
which we have already traced. Wars, like other public 
business, are ultimately a question of taxation. The Eng- 
lish Parliament, in asserting its power against the Crown, 
kept a firm hold upon taxation, and for that very purpose 
was compelled to adjust that taxation so as to command 
the support of various interests. 

Unquestionably the English aristocracy is of a haughtier nature 
than that of France, and less disposed to mingle familiarly with those 
who live in a humbler condition; but the obligations of its own rank 
imposed that duty upon it. It submitted that it might command. 

1 17wJ.,p. 374. 



. 



118 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

For centuries no inequality of taxation has existed in England except 
such exemptions as have been successively introduced for the relief of 
the indigent classes. Observe to what results different political prin- 
ciples may lead nations so nearly contiguous. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury the poor man in England enjoyed exemption from taxation, the 
rich in France. In one country the aristocracy has taken upon itself 
the heaviest public burdens in order to retain the government of the 
State; in the other the aristocracy retained to the last exemption from 
taxation as a compensation for the loss of political power. 1 

The States-General in France in the Middle Ages re- 
tained the same right of adjusting the taxation as the 
English. Parliament. 

The greater part of the general subsidies voted by the three Orders 
in the course of the fourteenth century were levied equally on the 
clergy, the nobility, and the people. 2 

It was in the struggle for the expulsion of the English 
from France under the lead of Joan of Arc that Charles 
VII. began to violate this rule. 

I venture to assert that when the French nation, exhausted by the 
protracted disturbances which had accompanied the captivity of King 
John and the madness of Charles VI., suffered the Crown to levy a 
general tax without the consent of the people or of the states of the 
realm, and when the nobility had the baseness to allow the middle 
and lower classes to be so taxed on condition that its own exemption 
should be maintained, at that very time was sown the seed of almost 
all the vices and almost all the abuses which afflicted the ancient 
society of France during the remainder of its existence, and ended by 
causing its violent dissolution. . . . When the king first undertook 
to levy taxes by his own authority, he perceived that he must select a 
tax which did not appear to fall directly on the nobles ; for that class, 
formidable and dangerous to the monarchy itself, would never have 
submitted to an innovation so prejudicial to their own interests. The 
tax selected by the Crown was, therefore, a tax from which the nobles 
were exempt, and that tax was the taille. 3 

It was the multiplication of this tax which made the 
taille one of the principal grievances of the Revolution. 
The Crown, having thus assumed the power of taxation, 

1 De Tocqueville, M France before the Revolution," Book II., Chap. X. 
2 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 119 

applied it not only arbitrarily but in the worst and most 
destructive forms. As their demands increased, 

the kings of France would neither convoke the States-General to 
obtain subsidies, nor would they provoke the nobility to demand that 
measure by imposing taxes on them without it. Hence arose that 
prodigious and mischievous fecundity of financial expedients which 
so peculiarly characterized the administration of the public resources 
during the last three centuries of the old French monarchy. 

It is necessary to study the details of the administrative and finan- 
cial history of that period to form a conception of the violent and 
unwarrantable proceedings which the want of money may prescribe 
even to a mild government, but without publicity and control, when 
once time has sanctioned its power and delivered it from the dread of 
revolution, that last safeguard of nations. 

Every page in these annals tells of possessions of the Crown first 
sold and then resumed as unsalable ; of contracts violated and of 
vested interests ignored ; of sacrifices wrung at every crisis from the 
public creditor, and of incessant repudiations of public engagements. 

Privileges granted in perpetuity were perpetually resumed. Thus 
Louis XIV. annulled all the titles of nobility acquired in the preced- 
ing ninety-two years, though most of them had been conferred by him- 
self ; but they could only be retained upon furnishing a fresh subsidy, 
all these titles having been obtained by surprise, said the edict. The same 
example was duly followed by Louis XV. eighty years later. The 
militiaman was forbidden to procure a substitute, for fear, it was said, 
of raising the price of recruits to the State. Towns, corporations, and 
hospitals were compelled to break their own engagements in order 
that they might be able to lend money to the Crown. Parishes were 
restrained from undertaking works of public improvement, lest by 
such a division of their resources they should pay their direct taxes 
with less punctuality. 1 

The wretched system of farming the taxes was another 
of the fatal expedients of finance, which in the long run 
could have but one result. Passing over the crushing 
weight of direct taxation upon the poor, including the 
corvSe or forced labor of the peasants upon the highways, 
take one example of the indirect methods. 

A boat laden with wine from Languedoc, Dauphiny, or Roussillon, 
ascending the Rhone and descending the Loire to reach Paris, through 

1 Ibid. 



120 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the Briare canal, pays on the way, leaving out charges on the Rhone, 
from thirty-five to forty kinds of duty, not comprising the charges on 
entering Paris. It pays these at fifteen or sixteen places, the multi- 
plied payments obliging the carriers to devote twelve or fifteen days 
more to the passage than they otherwise would if their duties could 
be paid at one bureau. The charges on the routes by water are par- 
ticularly heavy. From Pontarlier to Lyons there are twenty-five or 
thirty tolls; from Lyons to Aigues-Mortes there are others, so that 
whatever costs ten sous at Burgundy amounts to fifteen or eighteen 
sous at Lyons, and to over twenty-five sous at Aigues-Mortes. The 
wine at last reaches the barriers of the city where it is to be drunk. 
Here it pays an octroi of forty-seven francs per hogshead. Entering 
Paris, it goes into the tapster's or vintner's cellar, where it again pays 
from thirty to forty francs for the duty on selling it at retail. At 
Rennes the dues and duties on a barrel of Bordeaux wine, together 
with a fifth over and above the tax, local charges eight sous per pound, 
and the octroi, amount to more than seventy-two livres, exclusive of 
the purchase money. These charges fall on the wine-grower, since if 
consumers do not purchase he is unable to sell. 1 

Compare this with the provision of the Constitution of 
the United States that all duties, imports, and excises 
shall be uniform throughout the United States, and that 
no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any 
state, and ask if the difference is not sufficient in the 
course of a century to affect the whole character of a 
people. 

The next consequence of the absorption of the power 
of taxation by the Crown in France was the attempt to 
break the political power of the nobility, and for both 
purposes to create hostility between classes. For this 
the most effective of all instruments is inequality of 
taxation. The English nobility, by the habit of com- 
bining in Parliament with the squires and townspeople to 
control the sovereign, drew gradually nearer to them, and 
thus was produced that fusion of classes which has always 
been a marked feature in Great Britain. De Tocqueville, 
writing of the early part of the eighteenth century, 

says : — 

1 Taine, " Ancien Regime," Book V., Chap. II. 



tii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 121 

It was, indeed, not so much its Parliament, its liberty, its publicity, 
or its jury, which at that time rendered England so unlike the rest of 
Europe ; it was something far more peculiar and far more powerful. 
England was the only country in which the system of caste had been 
not only modified but effectually destroyed. The nobility and the 
middle classes in England followed the same business, embraced the 
same professions, and, what is far more significant, intermarried with 
each other. The daughter of the greatest nobleman could already, 
without disgrace, marry a man of yesterday. 1 

So, M. Taine : — 

The feudal seigniors, instead of allowing the sovereign to ally him- 
self with the people against them, allied themselves with the people 
against the sovereign. To protect their own interests better, they 
secured protection for the interests of others, and, after having served 
as the representatives of their compeers, they became the representa- 
tives of the nation. Nothing of this kind takes place in France. The 
States-General had fallen into desuetude, and the king may with 
truth declare himself the sole representative of the country. 2 

From the time of Louis XI., the French kings success- 
fully practised upon this principle of divide and rule. 

It was this desire of preventing the nation, when asked for its 
money, from asking back its freedom which gave rise to an incessant 
watchfulness in separating the classes of society so that they should 
never come together or combine in a common resistance, and that the 
government should never have on its hands at once more than a very 
small number of men separated from the rest of the nation. In the 
whole course of this long history, in which have figured so many 
princes remarkable for their ability, sometimes remarkable for their 
genius, almost always remarkable for their courage, not one of them 
ever made an effort to bring together the different classes of his people 
or to unite them otherwise than by subjecting them to a common 
yoke. 3 

But what strikes us most is that the nobility and the Tiers iZtat 
found it in the fourteenth century so much easier to transact business 
together or to offer a common resistance than they have ever found 
it since. This is observable not only in the States-General of the 
fourteenth century, many of which had an irregular and revolutionary 
character impressed upon them by the disasters of the time, but in 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., Book II., Chap. IX. 

2 "Ancien Regime," Book I., Chap. IV. 
8 De Tocqueville, ibid. , Chap. X. 



122 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the provincial Estates of the same period, where nothing seems to 
have interrupted the regular and habitual course of affairs. Thus, in 
Auvergne, we find that the three orders took the most important 
measures in common, and that the execution of them was represented 
by commissioners chosen equally from all three. The same thing 
occurred at the same time in Champagne. Every one knows the 
famous act by which, at the beginning of the same century, the nobles 
and burgesses of a large number of towns combined together to defend 
the franchises of the nation and the privileges of their provinces 
against the encroachments of the Crown. During that period of 
French history we find many such episodes, which appear as if bor- 
rowed from the history of England. In the following centuries events 
of this character altogether disappeared. 

The fact is that, as by degrees the government of the lordships 
became disorganized, and the States-General grew rarer or ceased 
altogether, — that, as the general liberties of the country were finally 
destroyed, involving the local liberties in their ruin, — the burgess and 
the noble ceased to come into contact in public life. They no longer 
felt the necessity of standing by one another, or of a mutual compact ; 
every day rendered them more independent of each other, but at the 
same time estranged them more and more. In the eighteenth century 
this Revolution was fully accomplished, the two conditions of men 
never met by accident in private life. Thenceforth the two classes 
were not only rivals but enemies. 1 

And thus it came about that when the States- General 
assembled in 1789, after an interval of 175 years, the first 
great difficulty, and one which hastened the march of 
events, was the refusal of the nobility and higher clergy 
to act in common with the Tiers Etat. There was another 
consequence of this separation of classes. 

It is always with great difficulty that men belonging to the upper 
classes succeed in discerning with precision what is passing in the mind 
of the common people, and especially of the peasantry. The education 
and the manner of life of the peasantry give them certain views of their 
own, which remain shut to all other classes. But when the poor and 
the rich have scarcely any common interests, common grievances, or 
common business, the darkness which conceals the mind of the one 
from the other becomes impenetrable, and the two classes might live 
forever side by side without the slightest interpenetration. It is 
curious to observe in what strange security all those who inhabited 

1 De Tocqueville, op. ciY., Book II., Chap. IX. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 123 

the upper or the middle stories of the social edifice were living at the 
very time when the Revolution was beginning, and to mark how in- 
genuously they discoursed on the virtues of the common people, on 
their gentleness, on their attachment to themselves, on their innocent 
diversions ; the absurd and terrible contrast of '93 was already beneath 
their feet. 1 

While the French kings were destroying the power of 
the nobles, the same process was destroying that of the 
towns. 

In France municipal freedom outlived the feudal system. Long 
after the landlords were no longer the rulers of the country districts, 
the towns still retained the right of self-government. Some of the 
towns of France continued down to nearly the close of the seventeenth 
century to form, as it were, small democratic commonwealths in which 
the magistrates were freely elected by the whole people, and were 
responsible to the people — in which the city was still proud of her 
rights and jealous of her independence. 

These elections were generally abolished for the first time in 1692. 
The municipal offices were then what was called put up to sale ; that 
is to say, the king sold in each town to some of the inhabitants the 
right of perpetually governing all their townsmen. And it well de- 
serves the scorn of history that this great change was accomplished 
without any political motive. Louis XL had curtailed the municipal 
liberties of the towns because he was alarmed by their democratic 
character. Louis XIV. destroyed them under no such fears. In reality 
his object was not to abolish them but to traffic in them, and if they 
were actually abolished it was, without meaning it, by a mere fiscal 
expedient. Seven times within eighty years the Crown resold to the 
towns the right of electing their magistrates, and as soon as they had 
once more tasted this blessing it was snatched away to be sold to them 
once more. 2 " Our financial necessities," says the preamble to an edict 
of 1772, "compel us to have recourse to the most effectual means of 
relieving them." In the eighteenth century the municipal govern- 
ment of the towns of France had thus everywhere degenerated into a 
contracted oligarchy. A few families arranged all the public business 

i Ibid., Chap. XII. 

2 "We may well agree with the haughty old aristocrat (St. Simon), 
whose truthfulness has allowed the world to perceive that the so much 
boasted grand siecle of Louis XIV. was, in fact, one of the poorest, vilest, 
and most fatal ages the world has seen." — T. A. Trollope, " Sketches 
from French History," p. 408. 



124 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

for their own private purposes, removed from the eye of the public, 
and with no responsibility. 1 

In Great Britain there had been steadily developed a 
system of local government, in towns by at least a class 
of citizens, in counties by authorities, lord lieutenants, 
sheriffs, justices, etc., which, even if they were appointed 
by the Crown, were much more in sympathy with their 
neighbors and ready to join them in opposition to the 
royal will. In France the same movement had been 
crushed in its early stages, and forcibly replaced by the 
system of centralization which is characteristic of her 
modern history. 

The Marquis d'Argenson relates in his " Memoirs " that one day 
Law said to him, "I never could have believed what I saw when I 
was Comptroller of Finance. Do you know that this kingdom of 
France is governed by thirty Intendants ? You have neither parlia- 
ment, nor estates, nor governors. It is upon thirty Masters of Requests, 
despatched into the provinces, that their evil or their good, their fer- 
tility or their sterility, entirely depend." 2 

In the centre of the kingdom and close to the throne was the King's 
Council, whose origin was ancient, but the greater part of whose func- 
tions w r ere of recent date. It was at once a supreme court of justice, 
inasmuch as it had the right to quash the judgments of all ordinary 
courts, and a superior administrative tribunal, inasmuch as every 
special jurisdiction was dependent on it in the last resort. Within 
its walls all important affairs were decided, and all secondary powers 
controlled. Everything finally came home to it ; from that centre was 
derived the movement which set everything in motion. Yet it pos- 
sessed no inherent jurisdiction of its own. The king alone decided, 
even when the Council appeared to advise, and even when it seemed 
to administer justice it consisted of no more than simple "givers of 
advice" — an expression used by the Parliament in one of its remon- 
strances. This Council was not composed of men of rank, but of per- 
sonages of middling or even low extraction, all of whom were liable 
to dismissal by the Crown. 

As the whole administration of the country was directed by a single 
body, so nearly the entire management of home affairs was intrusted to 

iDe Tocqueville, op. cit., Book II., Chap. III. Cf. what is said of 
government by commissions, post, Chap. XXII. 
2 Ibid., Chap. II. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 125 

the care of one single agent, — the Comptroller General. This official 
gradually took upon himself all the affairs that had anything to do 
with money, that is to say, almost the whole public administration, 
and he thus performed successively the duties of minister of finance, 
minister of the interior, minister of public works, and minister of 
trade. As the central administration had only one agent in Paris, so 
it had likewise but one single agent in each province. Nobles were 
still to be found in the eighteenth century bearing the titles of gov- 
ernors of provinces; they were the ancient and often the hereditary 
representatives of feudal royalty. Honors were still bestowed upon 
them, but they no longer had any power. The Intendant was in pos- 
session of the whole reality of government. 

The Intendant was a man of humble extraction, always a stranger 
to the province, and a young man who had his fortune to make. He 
never exercised his functions by any right of election, birth, or pur- 
chase of office ; he was chosen by the government among the inferior 
members of the Council of State, and was always subject to dismissal. 
All the powers which the Council itself possessed were accumulated in 
his hands and he exercised them all in the first instance. Like the 
Council, he was at once administrator and judge. He corresponded 
with all the ministers, and in the province was the sole agent of all 
the measures of the government. These powerful officers of the gov- 
ernment were completely eclipsed by the remnants of the ancient 
aristocracy, and lost in the brilliancy which that body still shed 
around it. So that, even in their own time, they were scarcely seen, 
although their finger was already on everything. In society the 
nobles had over such men the advantages of rank, wealth, and the 
consideration always attached to what is ancient. In the government 
the nobility were immediately about the person of the prince, and 
formed his court, commanded the fleets, led the armies, and in short 
did all that most attracts the attention of contemporaries and too often 
of posterity. A man of high rank would have been insulted by the 
proposal to appoint him an Intendant. The poorest man of family 
would have disdained the offer. In his eyes the Intendants were the 
representatives of an upstart power, new men appointed to govern the 
middle classes and the peasantry, and, as for the rest, very sorry com- 
pany. Yet, as Law said, these were the men who governed France. 1 

To begin with taxation, except those which were farmed 
out to the financial companies by the King's Council, 
who fixed the terms of the contract and regulated the 
mode of collection, all the taxes were fixed and levied 

1 Ibid. 



126 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

by these agents of the central administration or under 
their all-powerful control. The militia was the forerunner 
of the conscription, and is of itself a sign of the difference 
between the political history of Great Britain and France. 

From time to time the young men in the country were made to 
draw lots and from among them were taken a certain number of sol- 
diers, who were formed into militia regiments, in -which they served 
for six years. As the militia was a comparatively modern institution, 
none of the ancient feudal powers meddled with it ; the whole business 
was intrusted to the agents of the central government alone. The 
Council fixed the general amount of men and the share of each prov- 
ince. The Intendant regulated the number of men to be raised in 
each parish, his sub-delegate superintended the drawing of the lots, 
decided all cases of exemption, designated those militiamen who were 
allowed to remain with their families, and those who were to join the 
regiment, and finally delivered over the latter to the military authori- 
ties. There was no appeal except to the Intendant or the Council. 1 

It may be said with equal accuracy that, except in the pays d'etat, 
all public works, highways, bridges, and public buildings were decided 
upon and managed by the agents of the central power alone. The 
central government alone also undertook with the help of its agents 
to maintain public order in the provinces. The mounted police was 
dispersed in small detachments over the whole surface of the kingdom, 
and was everywhere placed under the control of the Intendants. It 
w r as by the help of these soldiers, and if necessary of regular troops, 
that the Intendant warded off any sudden danger, arrested vagabonds, 
repressed mendicity, and put down the riots which were continually 
arising from the price of corn. It never happened, as had been for- 
merly the case, that the subjects of the Crown were called upon to aid 
the government in this task, except, indeed, in the towns, where there 
was generally a town-guard, the soldiers of which were chosen and the 
officers appointed by the Intendant. 

Under the ancient feudal society it was the duty of the lord of the 
soil to succor the indigent in the interior of his domains. The last 
trace of this old European legislation is to be found in the Prussian 
code of 1795, which says, " The lord of the soil must see that the indi- 
gent peasants receive an education. It is his duty to provide means 
of subsistence to those of his vassals who possess no land, so far as he 
is able. If any of them fall into want, he must come to their assist- 
ance." But no law of the kind had existed in France for a long time. 
The lord when deprived of his former power considered himself lib- 
erated from his former obligations, and no local authority, no council, 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., Book II., Chap. II. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 127 

no provincial or parochial association had taken his place. No single 
being was any longer compelled by law to take care of the poor in the 
rural districts, and the central government had boldly undertaken to 
provide for their wants by its own resources. 

Every year the Council assigned to each province certain funds from 
the general produce of the taxes, which the Intendant distributed for 
the relief of the poor in the different parishes. It was to him that the 
indigent laborer had to apply, and in times of scarcity it was he who 
caused corn or rice to be distributed among the people. The Council 
annually issued ordinances for the establishment of charitable work- 
shops, where the poorer among the peasantry were enabled to find 
work at low wages, and the Council took it upon itself to determine 
the places where these were necessary. It may easily be supposed that 
alms thus bestowed from a distance were indiscriminate, capricious, 
and always very inadequate. The central government, moreover, did 
not confine itself to relieving the peasantry in time of distress ; it also 
undertook to teach them the art of enriching themselves, encouraged 
them in this task, and forced them to it if necessary. For this pur- 
pose from time to time it caused distributions of small pamphlets upon 
the science of agriculture to be made by its Intendants, founded 
schools of agriculture, offered prizes, and kept up at great expense 
nursery grounds, of which it distributed the produce. Sometimes the 
Council insisted upon compelling individuals to prosper, whether they 
would or no. The ordinances constraining artisans to use certain 
methods and to manufacture certain articles are innumerable. Some 
of the decrees of the Council even prohibited the cultivation of certain 
crops, which the Council did not consider proper for the purpose ; 
whilst others ordered the destruction of such vines as had been, ac- 
cording to its opinion, planted in an unfavorable soil. 1 

All classes looked to the Intendant as the dispenser of 
favors. 

Even the nobles were often very importunate solicitants : the only 
mark of their condition is the lofty tone in which they begged. Their 
quota of the tax of twentieths was fixed every year by the Council 
upon the report of the Intendant, and to him they addressed them- 
selves in order to obtain delays and remissions. I have read a host of 
petitions of this nature made by nobles, nearly all men of title, and 
often of very high rank. Sometimes pride and poverty were drolly 
mixed in these petitions. One of the nobles wrote to the Intendant, 
"Your feeling heart will never consent to see the father of a family 
of my rank strictly taxed by twentieths, like a father of the lower 
classes." 2 

l Ibid. * lb id., Chap. VI. 



128 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Not only had the nobility as a class lost political power, 1 
but for several centuries they had grown gradually poorer 
and poorer. 

Spite of its privileges the nobility is ruined and wasted day by 
day, and the middle classes get possession of the large fortunes/' wrote 
a nobleman in a melancholy strain in 1755. " In this district," says 
an Intendant at the beginning of the century, "the number of noble 
families still amounts to several thousands, but there are not fifteen 
amongst them who have twenty thousand livres a year." I find in 
some minutes addressed by another Intendant (of Franche-Comte) to 
his successor in 1750 : " The nobility of this part of the country is 
pretty good but extremely poor, and as proud as it is poor. It is 
greatly humbled compared to what it used to be. It is not bad policy 
to keep the nobles in this state of poverty in order to compel them to 
serve, and to stand in need of our assistance. 2 

All those nobles who could afford it were either hangers- 
on of the Court in Paris or Versailles, or sought posts 
abroad in diplomacy or military service. 

A few words must be said as to the relations of Church 
and State. The sixteenth century was the time of the 
greatest impulse of the Reformation, in which it made 
greater conquests than it has ever made since. In Eng- 
land it took the form of a schism, in which the king 
renounced the supremacy of the Pope and made himself 
the head of the Church. In appearance this greatly in- 
creased the power of the Crown, but in fact it was not so. 
In his conflict with the Pope, who wielded the still ter- 
rible weapon of excommunication, Henry VIII. needed the 
support of his subjects and was in no condition to be too 
strict with them. Moreover, although he broke up and 
confiscated the property of the monasteries, he was com- 
pelled to distribute this largely among his nobles and 
followers, thereby greatly increasing their power and 
tenacity of resistance to the royal will. 

1 No ten noblemen could meet to deliberate together on any matter 
without the express permission of the king. — De Tocqueville, Book II., 
Chap. XI. 2 Ibid., Chap. VIII. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 129 

During the short reign of Mary the papal religion was completely- 
reestablished, probably with the entire approval of a large portion, if 
not a majority, of the nation, for whom the progress of the Reforma- 
tion doctrines had been too precipitate. All the laws made against 
the supremacy of the see of Rome since the twentieth year of Henry 
VIII. were formally repealed ; but it was found impossible to restore 
the ecclesiastical property in the hands of subjects. 1 

In the long reign of Elizabeth Protestantism became so 
firmly established that the Stuarts were powerless against 
it, and in the struggles against Charles I., Charles II. 
and James II. religious liberty lent its powerful aid to 
political. The breaking up of the monasteries removed 
a foreign and corporate influence outside of the nation, 
upon which followed the discontinuance of enforced celi- 
bacy through the attitude of the new head of the Church. 
And thus was established the parish system, which is the 
basis of English local government to-day. 

In its early beginning the Reformation probably made 
as much progress in France as in any other country, and 
the Calvinist doctrines spread with great rapidity. But 
the other circumstances, which increased the power of the 
Crown and depressed all other classes, lent their aid to, 
and were aided by, the authority of the Church. After a 
fierce contest, culminating in the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, the Huguenots obtained from Henry IV., in 
1598, the Edict of Nantes, which made an approach to 
placing the churches on a footing of equality; but it is 
significant that that monarch found himself obliged to 
renounce his own religion and embrace the Roman Cath- 
olic. His well-known saying that "Paris vaut lien une 
messe" was merely a concrete statement of the fact that 
the royal and papal supremacy were inextricably bound 
up together. The tide began at once to set against the 
Protestants. Richelieu was enough of a statesman not to 
crush out entirely so available a power, but the climax 
1 Taswell-Langmead, op. cit., p. 438. 



130 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

came under Louis XIV. When the king began to feel 
the approach of age, and the failure at once of his am- 
bitious schemes and of his passions turned his mind 
towards devotion, he undertook to atone for his own sins 
by punishing those of other people, and under the sinister 
influence of Madame de Maintenon attempted to crush out 
the last sparks of religious liberty. The mention of the 
dragonnades is enough to characterize the proceedings of 
the close of his reign, and the Reign of Terror, a hundred 
years later, finds ample explanation, if not justification, in 
the Revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes. The num- 
ber of Huguenots, the flower of the nation, who left the 
country is estimated at three hundred thousand to five 
hundred thousand, and they formed a valuable addition, 
of which the traces still exist, to the population of the 
Palatinate, Brandenburg, Switzerland, Holland, and Eng- 
land. The remainder of the nation was handed over to 
the intellectual despotism, to speak mildly, of the Romish 
Church, the higher ecclesiastics, like the nobles, being 
separated from the masses of the people by exemption 
from taxation. 1 

We have now reached the brink of that tremendous 
vortex which was to sweep away for a time nearly all the 
institutions of old France, and many of them perma- 
nently. Perhaps the most general feeling throughout the 



1 In all the history of France there is no more important or more 
interesting period than that comprised in the last twenty years of the 
reign of Louis XIV. and the eight years of the regency which followed 
it. For it was during those years that the Revolution was prepared for 
and rendered inevitable. During those years the bark of the State 
was gliding down the current, ever approaching more and more rapidly 
the fated Niagara in front. During these years — or at all events during 
the earlier portion of them — it might have been possible for human 
wisdom and worth to have directed the onward course of French society 
to other issues. After the close of that period it was too late. The reign 
of Louis XV. was but a doomed rush onwards to the raging cataract. — 
T. A. Trollope, »» Sketches from French History," p. 402. 



vii FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION 131 

civilized world with regard to French history in the nine- 
teenth century is that it is a chaos of revolutions, one 
government after another being set up and pulled down 
in obedience to the fluctuating impulse of a mob. It may 
well be maintained, as against this view, that nowhere 
in history is visible a more logical and consistent opera- 
tion of cause and effect, the whole forming a struggle to 
solve the problem, which indeed underlies all the history 
of popular government, how to establish an executive 
strong enough to govern, and yet not strong enough to 
abuse its power. The parallelism between the modern 
history of England and France is of itself sufficient to 
indicate that the underlying principles are the same. 
The comparison between Strafford and Laud, on the one 
hand, and Richelieu and Mazarin, on the other, has been 
already noticed, and the reasons why the Frenchmen 
succeeded where the Englishmen failed. Charles I. sum- 
moned the Long Parliament, after an interval of thir- 
teen years, from financial necessity, just as Louis XVI. 
did the States-General after a much longer interval. 
The Long Parliament resulted in a Convention which 
beheaded the king, just as the National Assembly in 
France led up to the Convention which beheaded Louis 
XVI. with the addition of the queen, who of the two 
perhaps deserved it most. The anarchy into which the 
Parliament fell after the death of Charles I. brought 
the country under the despotism of Cromwell, just as a 
similar course of events threw France into the hands of 
Napoleon. The death of Cromwell was followed by the 
restoration of the Stuarts, and the political death of 
Napoleon by the restoration of the Bourbons. It may 
seem fanciful to compare the characters of Louis XVIII. 
and Charles X. with those of Charles II. and James II., 
but from a political point of view they were not unlike. 
At all events, the English revolution of 1688, which 



132 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, vii 

changed the succession and placed the crown, by act of 
Parliament, on the head of William III., had its close 
parallel in that of July, 1830, which transferred the 
throne to Louis Philippe. In fact, the French statesmen 
of the latter time professedly took the English events of 
1688 as their model. Here, however, the parallel ceases. 
The political training and traditions which enabled the 
English to work out the system of cabinet government 
were wholly wanting in France. How the traditions 
which they did have and the crushing weight of irre- 
sponsible despotism operated upon the events since 1789, 
it will be our task to examine in the next chapters. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

OELDOM has there occurred an event of such mo- 
^ mentous political significance to the world as the 
assemblage of the States-General at Versailles on May 
5, 1789. As usual with revolutions the precipitating 
cause was finance. After Calonne had tried the experi- 
ment of stimulating national prosperity by extravagant 
expenditure, and this, coming upon the demands of the 
American war, had so swelled the national debt that 
further borrowing was impossible, resort was had to a 
Convocation of the Notables or privileged classes of the 
nobles and clergy. This expedient failed from the com- 
prehensive objection of these classes to surrender their 
exemption from taxation. 1 The time had passed when, 
as was done by the English Parliament, and might have 
been done by the States-General four hundred years 
before, a grant of supplies could be made to the Crown in 
return for large political concessions on behalf of the 
national interest. It was not that public spirit was want- 
ing. The events of the night of August 4 following, 
when a clean sweep was made of all feudal privileges and 
exemptions, showed that the material was available for 
one side of the bargain. The failure was in the practice 
of acting together for a common object, which had been 

1 A contemporary cartoon wittily described the situation. A rustic 
(Calonne) has assembled his poultry to ask them with what sauce they 
will be cooked. A bird replies, " We don't want to be cooked." To this 
the rustic answers, u You are wandering from the question." — J. E. 
Stmes, "The French Revolution." 

133 



134 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

destroyed during the centuries when the royal power was 
nursing the growth of natural distrust and suspicion; in 
the corporate spirit which could feel that the highest in- 
terest of each lay in acting for the general good; in that 
feeling of confidence in each other which makes soldiers 
stand fast in their ranks in battle. 

The attempt to extract money from the Notables hav- 
ing failed, the next recourse was to the States-General. 
This body had not met since 1614, and in 1614 the repre- 
sentation of the Third Estate had been a mere farce. It 
was evident, however, that if a grant of money was the 
object, the only hope was in admitting the deputies of the 
commons, and to make this of any use they must be equal 
in number to those of the nobles and the clergy combined. 
But again it followed that, if the three houses were to 
vote separately, the nobles and the clergy could reject 
every reform and retain every privilege. By the advice 
of Necker, the double representation of the commons was 
granted, but the other question, which alone rendered it 
of value, whether there should be one house or three, 
was left undecided to bear evil fruit. 

The cahiers, or letters of instruction given to the dep- 
uties, have of late years been studied in detail. They 
were mostly drawn up by men of local reputation, law- 
yers, notaries, and the like, and appear to have been fairly 
temperate statements of grievances, while the deputies 
who brought them seem to have been a body as respect- 
able and well intentioned as any British House of Com- 
mons of the time. But they had no leaders or authorized 
guides, no prearranged policy or programme. Every- 
thing was new to them and to France. 

When the twelve hundred men came together at Ver- 
sailles, the nobles and clergy refused to sit with the com- 
mons. The commons, on the other hand, declared that 
they and those who chose to sit with them were the 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1S5 

National Assembly. The government, being at last 
obliged to decide, took sides with the privileged class. 
The commons found the doors of the Assembly closed to 
them, and, adjourning to the tennis court, took the famous 
oath not to separate till they had given France a new 
constitution. For more than seven weeks this dangerous 
question stood open, the two bodies regarding each other 
in sullen defiance, and with exasperation steadily rising 
in Paris and through the country. At length, on the 
24th of June, 149 of the lesser clergy joined the commons, 
and the rest of the dissidents gave way soon after. But 
the concession was only temporary. Troops were brought 
together to overawe the Assembly. On the 11th of July 
Necker and the more moderate ministers were dismissed. 
Three days later the reply to this came in the taking of 
the Bastille by the mob. 

At this point a recurrence suggests itself to the history 
of the Long Parliament in England. That body had the 
advantage of two centuries of parliamentary experience, 
and contained men from the landed gentry and others 
who might be supposed to wield influence. Yet within 
twelve years it was swept away by the military despotism 
of an unknown soldier. The lesson in both cases is the 
same, — the impossibility of government by a legislature. 
England in half a century worked out the beginning of 
the executive power which has been described, strong 
enough to govern, but not strong enough to destroy the 
national liberties. France has for a century oscillated 
between anarchy and despotism without having yet at- 
tained to any such result. Is it because her people are 
Frenchmen or is there not ample explanation in her pre- 
vious history ? Does it follow from this experience of a 
hundred years that democracy is a failure ? 

Another comparison arises with the Convention which 
assembled in Philadelphia two years before and framed 



136 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the Constitution of the United States, which went into 
operation in the same year that the States- General came 
together. That Convention consisted of fifty-five mem- 
bers, 1 delegates of a primitive, simple, and scattered pop- 
ulation, among whom there were none very rich and few 
very poor, and who had derived from their old Saxon 
ancestry, through the centuries of English history, those 
habits of self-government and organized public work 
which are assumed to be the exclusive characteristics of 
race. The Convention had neither to dread an armed 
invasion of royal power, the intrigues and spiritual 
weapons of an alien and wealthy church, nor the violence 
of a turbulent and starving mob. It was an opportunity 
such as had never been seen in the world. For four 
months they sat with closed doors in that quiet Quaker 
city, steadily and deliberately working away at a legal 
instrument under the presidency and the guidance of a 
man who, by the successful conduct of a seven years' war 
against Great Britain, had acquired a position almost 
royal in its influence, but who was animated by the 
purest and most disinterested patriotism and the loftiest 
principles of devotion to duty. 

The members of the Convention had before them the 
examples of the state constitutions. New Hampshire, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, North and South Carolina, had adopted constitu- 
tions in 1776; Vermont, New York, and Georgia in 1777, 
and Massachusetts in 1780. The members had the bene- 
fit also of English parliamentary history, embodying the 
experience and the traditions of their own race. They 
may be described as trained workmen, supplied with prac- 
tical and efficient tools. This by no means detracts from 

1 Total number of delegates elected, 65. Never attended the Conven- 
tion, 10. Attended but did not sign the constitution, 16. Number of 
signers, 39. — Eliot's "Debates." 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 137 

the merit of their work, but it precludes judgment of 
others who acted under far less favorable circumstances. 
At Versailles there was assembled what was in itself a 
mob of twelve hundred men, of whom one half had to at- 
tack and the other half to defend class privileges at once 
of enormous value and the most odious injustice. There 
were no habits or traditions of self-government, whether 
local or general, of organizing in public meetings or for 
public work, or even of debate. 1 The only approach to 

1 In his introduction to the "Orators of the French Revolution" Mr. 
H. Morse Stephens has pointed out that the models of oratory in France 
for the two centuries preceding the Revolution, " were clerical, legal, and 
academical, and that political oratory was conspicuous by its absence. 
This was due to the policy inaugurated by Richelieu, and carried out by 
Mazarin and Louis XIV., of preventing all public discussion of political 
matters, and to the fact that after 1613 no free assembly met in which 
public affairs could be debated. The Parlement of Paris, after its short- 
lived attempt to imitate an English Parliament during the period of the 
Fronde, was forced back into its place as a purely judicial body by Louis 
XIV., and all subsequent attempts of the parlements of France to inter- 
fere in politics were promptly repressed. The great ministers of Louis 
XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. were all men of deeds, not words. 
Mazarin, Colbert, and Louvois were as poor speakers as Choiseul, Turgot, 
and Necker; and since there was no necessity for ministers to defend 
their measures in public, and no place or opportunity for their opponents 
to criticise them, it naturally followed that there was no need for the 
statesmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be orators. 
To the priest, lawyer, and man of letters the gift of eloquence was a sure 
title to success and it was therefore cultivated by them ; but to the politi- 
cian or official it was of no importance whatever. After the meeting 
of the States-General in 1789, however, the value of political oratory 
entirely changed and the possession of political eloquence and debating 
power opened the way to reputation. From the one extreme the French 
nation rushed to the other, and instead of eloquence exerting no influence 
on the course of public affairs it soon became too predominant.' ' 

Yet he observes that the speeches still preserved for the most part 
have the character of written essays, and were spoken from the tribune 
and not from the speaker's place in debate. The following quotation also 
illustrates what has been said of the manner in which the political devel- 
opment of France has been modified by her history as compared with that 
of England : — 

"Yet it is hardly fair to speak of political oratory as absolutely begin- 
ning in France with the Revolution, for there had been States-Generals 



138 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

leadership was in the Marquis de Mirabeau, a nobleman 
of dissolute and irregular life which had broken his physi- 
cal constitution, reckless in expenditure and overwhelmed 
with debt, and who consented to receive secret pay from 
the court. Yet his statesmanlike instinct and force of 
character brought him to the front and gave promise of 

before, and in them great affairs of State and of public policy bad been 
eloquently discussed. It is impossible to resist the temptation of recall- 
ing the memory of that grand character of the sixteenth century, the Chan- 
cellor Michel de L'Hopital, though there is no trace of his influence in the 
speeches of Mirabeau and Danton, who resembled him alike in their tem- 
perament and in the character of their oratory. There are passages in 
his speeches which might well have been spoken by them, and which have 
their exact counterpart again and again in the speeches of the greatest 
Revolutionary orators." 

Compare the effect upon political oratory in the United States of the 
methods of procedure in Congress and the state legislatures, post, Chaps. 
XVII., XVIII. , XXII. 

Another quotation which Mr. Stephens makes from Sir Samuel Romilly 
is of force in the same direction. 

" Some months after I had returned from Paris," writes Sir Samuel in 
1789, "I received a letter from the Count de Sarsfield requesting me to 
send him some book which stated the rules and orders of proceeding in 
the English House of Commons. He thought it would be extremely use- 
ful to assist the States-General in regulating their debates and their modes 
of transacting business. There was no such book, and I could send him 
nothing that would answer his purpose. There was nothing to be done 
but to draw up a statement of the rules of the House of Commons myself, 
and I very cheerfully set about it, though it was likely to occupy a good 
deal of my time. When it was as complete as I could make it, I sent it 
to the Count de Sarsfield. He received it most thankfully and set about 
translating it into French. He died, however, before he had advanced 
far with the work, and from his hands the papers passed into those of 
Mirabeau. Mirabeau, fully sensible of the importance of the work, with 
all expedition translated and published it. It never, however, was of the 
smallest use, and no regard whatever was paid to it by the National As- 
sembly. It met, having to form its own rules and mode of proceeding. 
The leading members were little disposed to borrow anything from Eng- 
land. They did not adopt these rules, and they hardly observed any 
others. Much of the violence which prevailed in the Assembly would 
have been allayed and many rash measures unquestionably prevented if 
their proceedings had been conducted with order and regularity." 

And Mr. Stephens observes, " The noisy behavior of the deputies, who 
had not been trained to sit in deliberative assemblies, and the interfer- 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 139 

future results, which was cut short by early death. This 
large body of men, disorganized, without leaders or rules 
or concert of action, was exposed to forces which would 
have been sufficient to crush any deliberative assembly 
that ever met in the world. First, there was the king 
and the court. Louis XVI. was chiefly distinguished 
from his predecessor, Louis XV., by the respectability 
of his private character, as a good husband and father, 
and as desiring in a general way the welfare of his people. 
But he disliked governing, his chief interest was in hunt- 
ing, and he appears to have been a shy, awkward, and 
rather stupid man. Very different was the queen, a 
young, ambitious, and beautiful woman, given up to the 
pleasures of court life, without a nerve of sympathy for 
the reforming spirit of the time, and anxious only for the 
intervention of foreign powers to suppress disorders, of 
which the only meaning was for her that they interfered 
with the ordinary current of affairs. Thus the royal 
power, to which the nation had been accustomed for two 
centuries to look as the guiding force of government, was 
completely at fault, either for the maintenance of the old 
order of things or the acceptance of the new. Of the 
court nobles a large part began early to leave the coun- 
try, 1 and continued to raise outcries and conspiracies 
along the frontiers. Those who remained were urging 
the king to violence against the Assembly and joining the 
queen to bring about an invasion by foreign powers. If 
this was the case on the upper side the difficulty was even 

ence of the casual spectators and visitors, helped to bring about a state of 
confusion which was subversive of any chance of earnest debating, and 
which could only be quieted by the reading of an important report or of 
a carefully prepared speech." 

1 In the summer of 1789 "six thousand passports are issued within 
two months. Then no more are to be granted except on a medical certifi- 
cate. But doctors are obliging and medical certificates flow in." — J. E. 
Symes, op. cit., Chap. V. 



140 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

greater from the lower. The Assembly sat at first near 
and afterwards in one of the largest cities with one of the 
fiercest and most turbulent populations in Europe. At 
a time when only the strongest executive power could 
have kept order, there was no executive power at all. 
The flight of so many wealthy members of the community 
had greatly increased the suffering and exasperation. The 
whole country was looking to Paris and Versailles for re- 
lief and guidance. When the answer came in the quar- 
rels of the three orders, the taking of the Bastille, the 
abolition of feudal rights and traditions on the 4th of 
August, and the forced return of the king on October 6, 
there could be little wonder that the bonds of authority 
were broken. 

If these were the circumstances under which the Assem- 
bly did its work, what was the character of that work ? 
The Federal Convention at Philadelphia had nothing to 
do with nearly all of the most important and difficult 
problems of social and civil life. Those were and contin- 
ued to be regulated by the state governments. What the 
Convention had to do was to devise some scheme by which 
the states could live and work together in union. It is 
not in any way underrating the wonderful success of their 
work to say that it was as child's play compared with that 
required of the National Assembly in France. 

First, there was the question of local government. The 
central administrative power was too much dislocated to 
admit of the continuance of government by intendants, 
besides which the whole tendency of the eighteenth-cen- 
tury ideas was towards self-government. Therefore the 
Assembly proceeded to divide the country into depart- 
ments, districts, and communes, all governed by elected 
officials. It established also innumerable officials and 
small councils to act as a check upon each other, and 
the result was a terrible confusion of powers everywhere. 



viii THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 141 

The voter creates all local powers, intermediary, central, legislative, 
administrative, ecclesiastical, and judicial. 1 

To meet the requirements of election alone, M. Taine 
estimates that two full days in every week would have to 
be given by every citizen. The disastrous effects were 
nowhere so visible as in Paris. 

Secondly, there was the immense question of the 
Church. There were in France one hundred and thirty 
thousand ecclesiastics holding one-fifth of the soil of the 
country, though in vastly differing proportions. The 
total value was estimated at eight hundred millions of our 
dollars. 2 The problem was much like that which pre- 
sented itself in England under Henry VIII. But that 
which was possible with the strong executive power of a 
despotic monarch acting through organized machinery, 
and establishing a new State Church of which he was 
the head, became impossible with a body of twelve hun- 
dred men, of whom nearly one-half were opposed to the 
change, where there was no executive power at all, and no 
possible ecclesiastical substitute to satisfy the religious 
wants of the people. 

It is difficult on any ground, except that of expediency, to defend 
the earlier Reformation movement in England and yet to condemn 
the ecclesiastical legislation of the Assembly. But the event proved 
that in the former case the government was strong enough to intro- 
duce the new system, in spite of some formidable riots; while in the 
latter the changes led ultimately to civil war and divided French 
society into two hostile camps, with a division that was to last for a 
hundred years between the Church and the Revolution. 

This deplorable result was partly due to a resolution of the Assem- 
bly requiring all the clergy to take an oath of loyalty to the new 
constitution. In England the Tudor rulers were wise enough not to 
hurry matters in this way. They tendered a similar oath to the chief 
officers of the Church, but they left ordinary parsons to adapt them- 
selves to the new system, so long as they did not openly attack it. If 

1 Taine, "French Revolution," Book II., Chap. HE. 

2 Idem, " Ancien Regime." 



142 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the French Assembly had shown equal prudence, it is possible that the 
storm would have blown over. 

Many of the priests were peasants by birth, and sympathized at 
heart with most of the revolutionary changes that were taking place. 
They had shown their sympathies in the early days of the States- 
General in spite of pressure from their superiors. They would many 
of them gladly have remained neutral. But they were now called on, 
under pain of dismissal, publicly and formally to accept a system con- 
demned by the Pope and the church authorities. About one-third of 
them complied. Many hesitated; but in the end a large majority re- 
fused. They were expelled from their cures and naturally became 
centres of reactionary agitation. Their places were only filled with 
difficulty, and largely by men of bad character. Pious Catholics nat- 
urally resented the change and would not accept the ministration of 
those whom they regarded as schismatics. There was bloodshed in 
many parts of France : and even when some sort of order was restored, 
the rival parties were ready to fly at one another's throats at the ear- 
liest opportunity. Thus the ecclesiastical legislation of the Assembly 
paved the way for the later civil war, and especially the terrible rising 
of la Vendee. 1 

Yet the folly and the severity of the action of the 
Assembly were certainly less than those of Louis XIV. in 
relation to the Huguenots. 

A third question was that of finance. It was impending 
bankruptcy which caused the States-General to be called 
together, but they did not help the matter. Not only 
was all power of borrowing gone, but taxation failed. 
Not only was the system of taxation changed, but the 
collecting power was gone. A single quotation from 
M. Taine will illustrate the whole state of the finances 
throughout France. 

In certain regions, of the land tax of 1791 there had been secured, 
on January 30, 1792, only 152,000,000 francs, there being still 
222,000,000 to collect, and on the 1st of February, 1793, there re- 
mained 160,000,000; while of the 50,000,000 assessed in 1790 to 
replace the salt tax and other duties, only 2,000,000 have been col- 
lected. Out of the two direct taxes of 1792, which should produce 
300,000,000, less than 4,000,000 have been received. 2 

1 J. E. Symes, op. cit., Chap. VI. 

2 Taine, "French Revolution," Book III., Chap. II. 



vni THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 143 

The resort to assignats, or inconvertible paper money, 
was almost, if not quite, a necessity. There had fallen 
into the national treasury the equivalent of $800,000,000 
in church lands and half as much more in the con- 
fiscated property of the nobles. The property could 
not be sold because there was no money to buy it 
with. In the hands of an English chancellor of the ex- 
chequer, with concentrated executive authority and the 
employment of a judicious mixture of funding with cur- 
rency, the worst evils might have been perhaps averted. 
But it is one of those subjects on which an undisciplined 
assembly, without authoritative guides, was certain to 
come to shipwreck. 

Still another difficulty was in socialism, though the 
word had not come into such current use as in our own 
time. In the terrible distress which prevailed throughout 
the country the Assembly encouraged municipalities to 
set up workshops for the unemployed; and they pur- 
chased immense quantities of grain, which they sold 
below cost price, with the result of attracting crowds of 
vagrants to the large towns. Yet the problem was not 
of their making, and it was hardly possible to avoid deal- 
ing with it in some way. The Assembly, however, was 
far from being democratic. While Louis XVI., in sum- 
moning the States-General, had resorted to universal suf- 
frage, the Assembly, by its suffrage requirement of the 
payment of taxes equal to three days' labor, and for hold- 
ing office of taxes equal to a mark of silver, as well as by 
its secondary elections, disfranchised even comparatively 
wealthy workmen and carefully restricted all offices to 
the bourgeois. 1 

Two great political mistakes the Assembly clearly made, 
the first being the exclusion of the king's ministers from 
the Assembly. Mirabeau saw this clearly. 

1 H. Morse Stephens, "French Revolution," Vol. I., Chap. IX. 



144 THE LESSON OF POPULAK GOVERNMENT chap. 

Early in October, 1789, Mirabeau was requested on behalf of 
Monsieur le Comte de Provence to draw up a memoir as to what 
course the king had better pursue in such an emergency. He began 
by saying that, while all which the Assembly had done must be rati- 
fied, the initiative in future in framing the new constitution must 
come from the king and not from the irresponsible talkers in the 
Assembly. He then proceeds to show that the only way in which 
the king can manage the Assembly and thus direct the formation of 
the new constitution is to select a responsible ministry from the lead- 
ing members of the Assembly, who, being both servants of the king 
and representatives of the people, could, after the fashion of our 
English ministry, try to strike out a practical form of government, 
which would at once satisfy the people and preserve the efficiency of 
the executive. It was possible that the king and the present Assem- 
bly might be able to act together. To do so, the first thing was to 
form a responsible ministry from among the leaders of the Assembly. 
But the whole scheme was far too vast for the mind of the poor king, 
which, as Monsieur said upon this occasion, could no more grasp such 
a collection of ideas than oiled billiard balls could be held together. 1 

Mr. Stephens thinks that the scheme might yet have 
succeeded by the aid of the queen, but a report of it got 
abroad and it was defeated by the jealousy of the Assem- 
bly, with the cry that the new ministry would obtain 
a powerful sway over the Assembly and there would be 
an end of the new constitution. 

The Decree of November 7, by which it was declared illegal for 
any member of the Assembly to take office under the Crown while he 
held his seat, or for six months after his resignation, gives another 
instance of the incompetency of the Assembly. 

And Mr. Stephens adds : — 

Indeed, the mistake they made was so obvious that it is hardly 
necessary to dwell upon it, and it strikes the keynote of the consistent 
policy of the Assembly to divorce the executive from the legislative 
power, and then to make all harmony between them impossible. The 
secret of good government is to maintain the two powers in harmony, 
while in all matters of administration the executive can act on its 
own responsibility, and the legislature does not interfere in every 
small administrative detail. 2 

1 H. Morse Stephens, op. cit., Vol. I., Chap. VIII. * Ibid. 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 145 

In fact, it was much less a mistake or a proof of the 
incompetency of the Assembly, than of the grasping 
ambition of a legislature which wishes to absorb all 
power and is jealous of the executive and of leadership 
of any kind. On precisely the same principle the first 
Congress of the United States rejected Alexander Hamil- 
ton's proposal to make an oral exposition of the state of 
finances, and by its vote excluded the members of the 
Cabinet from any share in its deliberations to this day. 
In the absence of any positive voice of the executive with 
regard to legislation, the Assembly granted to' the king 
a limited veto upon its measures, which worked as badly 
as such an illogical institution always must work ; that is, 
it served only to exasperate the Assembly by blocking 
the result of its deliberations, even though that body 
might have accepted the same reasoning if brought to 
bear in advance. 1 



1 Constituent Assembly after August 4, 1789. They debated lengthily 
whether the future representative assembly of France should consist of 
one or two chambers, and whether the king should have power to veto 
its acts. The first question was decided in favor of a single chamber, 
more because the English Constitution sanctioned two chambers, and the 
deputies feared to be thought imitators, than for any logical reason. And 
the debate on the second question terminated in the grant to the king of 
a suspensive veto for six months, in spite of the eloquence of Mirabeau, 
who saw that a monarchical constitution, which gave to the king no more 
power than the President of the United States of America, would prove 
unworkable, because it would divorce responsibility from real authority, 
leaving the former to the king and the latter to the legislature. — 
Idem, "European History, 1789-1815," Vol. I., p. 61. 

The king, under the new constitution, was left powerless. He was 
to be the first functionary of the State, nothing more. The ministers 
were invested with supreme executive authority, but more regulations 
were made to insure their responsibility and limit their actual power than 
to define their functions. They were to be answerable to the legislature 
in which they were not allowed to sit, and their measures were to be 
criticised by an irresponsible representative assembly. Under such regu- 
lation the king and his ministers, that is, the executive, were put in a 
position of inferiority which no vigorous man could be expected to accept, 
to the inevitable derangement of the whole administrative machine. — 



146 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The second mistake of the Assembly was the self-deny- 
ing ordinance carried by Robespierre on the 7th of May, 
1791, by which all deputies sitting in the Constituent 
Assembly were declared ineligible for seats in the suc- 
ceeding legislature. 

In the month of June, 1791, there still remained in the Assembly 
about seven hundred members, who, adhering to the constitution but 
determined to repress disorder, would have formed a sensible legisla- 
ture had they been reelected. With the executive instrument in their 
hands for three months they see that it is racked, that things are 
tottering, and that they themselves are being run over by fanatics 
and the populace. They accordingly attempt to put on a drag, and 
several even think of retracing their steps. The Jacobins, however, 
have foreseen this danger. With the aid of the court, which never 
missed an opportunity to ruin itself and everything else, they made 
the most of the rancors of the " Right " and the lassitude of the 
Assembly ; fatigued and disgusted, in a fit of mistaken disinterested- 
ness, the Assembly, through impulse and taken by surprise, passes an 
act declaring all its members ineligible for election to the following 
Assembly, which is tantamount to the displacement in advance of the 
staff of honest men. 1 

Again we are reminded of the self-denying ordinance, 
by which under the impulse of Cromwell and his followers 
the Long Parliament in England aimed to get rid of the 
generals commanding the army. Both instances show 
how an incoherent legislature is at the mercy of a small 
but violent faction. 

Ibid., p. 70. Compare post, Chap. XVI. In some respects the Polish 
Constitution accepted by the Diet of Warsaw, May 3, 1791, compared 
favorably with that of France drawn up at this time. It created a regular 
government, conferring the legislative power on the king, the Senate, and 
an elected chamber, and the executive power on the king, aided by six 
ministers responsible to the legislature. If it does not proclaim so for- 
mally the liberty of man, it at any rate is free from the lamentable fear of 
the power of the executive which vitiated the work of the French re- 
formers. France feared its executive after a long course of despotic 
monarchy ; Poland felt the need of a strong executive after a long history 
of anarchy. — H. Morsk Stephkns, op. cit., p. 104. 
1 Taine, "French Revolution," Book IV., Chap. III. 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 147 

It took the Assembly twenty-three months to draw up a constitution 
(August, 1789, to September, 1791), and during the interval there was 
a sort of makeshift government, chaotic, inefficient, a mixture of old 
institutions nominally abolished and new ones not yet legalized. The 
Assembly had grasped the supreme power, but had little means of 
wielding it. 

Yet with all its faults its work in many respects had been well 
done. Trial by jury, religious toleration, the abolition of privileges, 
freedom of trade within the country, were given by it to France. 1 

Many of the principles afterwards embodied in the Code 
Napoleon had been worked out by its committees. Its 
members should have credit for 

their real longing to try to contrive such a mode of government as 
would give to every Frenchman some interest both in local and im- 
perial affairs; their desire that equal justice should be meted out to 
every man both rich and poor ; their wish that birth and wealth should 
not be the only passports to political power ; their earnest hope that 
the new state of France should be something better than the old ; 
their belief that men were not made to be governed but to govern 
themselves, and that if France was to be made happy, great, and pros- 
perous, it could only be so because every Frenchman was himself fairly 
governed and justly taxed, and could feel himself to be an important 
unit in his fatherland. 2 

It is true that the deputies had so weakened executive power as to 
render it useless for purposes of government; true that they were 
possessed by a mania for election ; true that they failed to recognize 
the power of religion as represented by the Church of Rome, and that 
they had no respect for international law. Yet it must be remembered 
that men are not born statesmen, and Englishmen who know that the 
English Constitution has slowly grown from a series of precedents 
should not be hasty in condemning the earnest efforts of inexperi- 
enced politicians who strove their best for two years to draw up a 
constitution which should insure to Frenchmen the priceless boon of 
political liberty and personal freedom, which Englishmen had then 
enjoyed for a century. 3 

With the advent of the Legislative Assembly in Octo- 
ber, 1791, began the rapid descent to anarchy, the violence 
of faction and its consequent result, military despotism. 

1 Symes, op. cit. , pp. 40, 57. 

2 H. Morse Stephens, " French Revolution," Vol. I., Chap. IX., p. 290. 
8/&i&,Chap. XV., p. 469. 



148 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Throughout the whole confused struggle, the lesson taught 
is of the simplest : that the only indispensable part of 
any government is the executive. Unless that is strong 
enough to maintain order under all circumstances, con- 
servatism and reform are alike impossible. The social 
fabric becomes dissolved, the worst and most violent ele- 
ments get the upper hand, and the better and more peace- 
able majority, after vain efforts to protect themselves by 
combination and union, become discouraged and apathetic, 
and finding their affairs proceed from bad to worse have 
recourse, as the least of two evils, to the strong hand of a 
despot. 

It has been remarked that one very great cause for the peaceful 
state of France in 1791 is to be found in the establishment of the new 
local authorities which at first worked well. All the ablest men in 
the country were seized by a passion for taking part in public affairs, 
and there was therefore no difficulty in getting the best men — men 
really longing to do all in their power to make France free, contented, 
and happy — to hold public office. The order in which the new local 
institutions came into legal operation was, first, the establishment of 
new municipalities, then the authorities of the new districts and de- 
partments, and lastly the new law courts. The delightful and novel 
sensation of electing their authorities gave extraordinary interest to 
these first elections, and the new municipalities invariably included 
the real notables of the commune, while the chief fault to be found 
with them was their over-officiousness. Next in order to the munici- 
palities, the councils general, directories, procureurs syndic, and pro- 
cureurs general syndic were elected over France in April, 1790, and 
for these places and offices also the best men were generally chosen 
by the electors. Finally, in December, 1790, the judges of the new 
tribunals and the new justices of the peace Were elected and in most 
instances the ablest lawyers were elected for the important posts and 
competent lawyers for those of less importance. 1 

With the jealousies, the confusion, and the want of 
steadying force among all these jarring authorities, it was 
impossible that this should last. The voters very early 
became wearied with the demands upon their time, from 

i Stephens, op. cit., Vol. I., Chap. XVI., pp. 501, 602. 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 149 

the numerous and frequent elections. 1 With small pri- 
mary meetings, whether in France or the United States, 
the result is almost inevitable that a still smaller and vio- 
lent faction, organized and under the direct stimulus of 
personal power and profit, will always overcome the well- 
disposed majority, bound together only by the compara- 
tively feeble motive of the general public good. The 
instrument for carrying out this work in France was the 
famous Jacobin club. 

This club had its origin in the association of " The Friends of the 
Constitution" which was formed before the Revolution. At the 
Assembly of the States-General in Brittany, in April, 1789, certain 
members pointed out the necessity of acting in concert, and as soon 
as they arrived in Versailles their deputies, joining with others, hired 
a hall and formed a union which was destined to last. Up to the 6th 

1 At Chartres, in May, 1790, 1447 out of 1550 voters do not attend the 
preliminary meetings. At Besancon, in January, 1790, on the election of 
mayor and municipal officers, 2141 out of 3200 registered electors are 
recorded as absent from the polls, and 2900 in the following month of 
November. At Grenoble, in August and November of this year, out of 
2500 registered voters, more than 2000 are noted as absent. At Limoges, 
out of about the same number, there were only 150 voters. At Paris, 
out of 81,400 electors in August, 1790, 67,200 do not vote, and three 
months later the number of absentees is 71,408. Petion is elected Mayor 
of Paris by 6728 out of 10,632 voting. Manuel is elected Attorney of the 
Commune by 3770, out of 5311 voting. Primary meeting of June 13, 
1791, canton of Be"ze (C6te-d'Or): out of 460 active citizens, 157 are 
present, and, on the final ballot, 58. Lozere : 1000 citizens at most, out 
of 25,000, voted at the primary meetings. At St. Chely, capital of the 
district, a few armed ruffians succeed in forming the primary meeting, 
and in substituting their own election for that of eight parishes, whose 
frightened citizens withdrew from it. At Langogne, chief town of the 
canton and district, out of more than 400 active citizens, 22 or 23 
at most — just what one would suppose them to be when their pres- 
ence drove away the rest — alone formed the meeting. In the election 
of deputies the case is the same. In Paris, in 1791, only 7000 voters are 
found at the election of the electors who elect deputies to the legislature, 
while out of 946 electors chosen, only 200 are found to give their suffrage ; 
at Rouen, out of 700 there are but 160, and, on the last day of the ballot, 
only 60. In short, "in all the departments," says an orator of the 
tribune, " scarcely one out of five electors of the second degree discharges 
his duty." — Taine, op. cit., Book IV., Chap. II. 



150 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chjlp. 

of October none but deputies were comprised in it ; after that date, 
on removing to Paris, in the library of the Jacobins, a convent in the 
Rue St. Honore, many well-known, eminent men were admitted, 
including authors and artists, the whole amounting to about a thou- 
sand notable personages. No assemblage could be more imposing — 
two or three hundred deputies are on its benches, while its rules and 
by-laws seem specially designed to gather a superior body of men. 
Candidates for admission were proposed by ten members, and after- 
wards voted on by ballot. To be present at one of its meetings 
required a card of admission. On one occasion a member of the 
committee of two, appointed to verify these cards, happens to be the 
young Duke of Chartres. Seen from afar, no society seems worthier 
of directing public opinion ; near by, the case is different. 1 

Meantime the radical Jacobins were extending their power through- 
out France. A club had been established in Marseilles in 1789. Each 
large town had one within the first six months of 1790: Aix in 
February, Montpellier in March, Nismes in April, Lyons in May, and 
Bordeaux in June. Within a month after the Federation festival, 
sixty of these associations are in operation ; three months later one 
hundred ; in March, 1791, 229, and in August, 1791, nearly four hun- 
dred. After this date two causes gave a fresh stimulus. On the one 
hand, at the end of July, 1791, all moderate men, the friends of law 
and order, who still hold the clubs in check, all constitutionalists, or 
Feuillants, withdraw from them and leave them to the ultraism or 
triviality of the motionnaires. On the other hand, a convocation of the 
electoral body is held at the same date for the election of the new 
National Assembly and for the renewal of local governments ; the prey 
being in sight hunting parties are everywhere formed to capture it. 
In two months six hundred new clubs spring up ; by the end of Sep- 
tember they amount to one thousand, and in June, 1792, to twelve 
hundred — as many as there are towns and walled boroughs. On the 
fall of the throne and at the panic caused by the Prussian invasion, 
during a period of anarchy which equalled that of July, 1789, there 
were, according to Roederer, almost as many clubs as there were com- 
munes, — twenty-six thousand, — one for every village, containing five 
or six hot-headed, boisterous fellows or roughs with a copyist able to 
pen a petition. In the departments, however, where distance lends 
enchantment, and where old customs prevail implanted by centraliza- 
tion, the Paris club is accepted as a guide because its seat is at the 
capital. Its statutes, its regulations, its spirit, are all imitated; it 
becomes the alma mater of other associations, and they its adopted 
daughters. It publishes, accordingly, a list of all clubs conspicuously 

1 Taine, op. cit., Book IV., Chap. IT. Does not this suggest a com- 
parison with Tammany Hall in New York ? 



vni THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 161 

in its journal, together with their denunciations ; it insists on their 
demands; henceforth every Jacobin in the remotest borough feels the 
support and endorsement, not only of his local club, but again of the 
great club whose numerous offshoots overspread the territory, and 
thus extend its all-powerful protection to the least of its adherents. 
In return for this protection, each associated club obeys the word 
of command given at Paris, and to and fro, from the centre to the 
extremities, a constant correspondence maintains the established har- 
mony. A vast political machine is thus set a-going, a machine with 
thousands of arms, all working at once under one impulsion, and the 
lever which gives the motion is in the hands of a few master spirits in 
the Rue St. Honore. 1 

At first sight the success of the Jacobins seems doubtful, for they 
are in a minority, and a very small one. At Besancon, in November, 
1791, the revolutionists of every shade of opinion and degree, whether 
Girondists or Montagnards, consist of about 500 or 600 out of 3000 
electors, and in November, 1792, of not more than the same number 
out of 6000 and 7000. At Paris, in November, 1791, there are 6700 
out of more than 81,000 on the rolls ; in October, 1792, there are less 
than 14,000 out of 160,000. At Troyes, in 1792, there are found only 
400 or 500 out of 7000 electors, and at Strasburg the same number 
out of 8000 electors. Accordingly, only about one-tenth of the elec- 
toral population are revolutionists, and if we leave out the Girondists 
and the semi-conservatives the number is reduced by one-half. Tak- 
ing the whole of France all the Jacobins put together do not amount 
to 300,000. This is a small number for the enslavement of 6,000,000 
of able-bodied men, and for installing in a country of 26,000,000 in- 
habitants a more absolute despotism than that of any Asiatic sover- 
eign. Force, however, is not measured by numbers ; they form a 
band in the midst of a crowd, and in this disorganized crowd a band 
that is determined to push its way like an iron wedge splitting a log. 

And M. Taine adds : — 

The only defence a nation has against inward usurpation, as well 
as invasion from without, is its government. Government is the in- 
dispensable instrument of common action. Let it fail or falter and 
the great majority, otherwise employed, undecided what to do and 
lukewarm, disintegrates and falls to pieces. Resolution, audacity, 
rude energy, are all that are needed to make the lever act, and none 
of these are wanting in the Jacobin. 2 

The elections to the only Legislative Assembly that met under the 
constitution of 1791 revealed a widespread indifference to politics 

i Ibid. * Ibid. 



152 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

among the active citizens. Most of them abstained from voting alto- 
gether. The explanation of this seems to be that the middle and 
lower middle classes had now secured the things they chiefly wanted 
from government. Feudalism and privileges had been swept away. 
Tolerable judicial and administrative systems had been established. 
The power of the Church was broken and the church lands had 
passed into the hands of active citizens. The small landed proprietors 
and the commercial classes alike, relieved from their old burdens, 
were now eagerly bent on availing themselves of the new conditions, 
and on making money as fast as possible. Most of them were too 
busy or too careless to exercise their political rights. Those who did 
vote, voted mostly for men as devoid of political principles as them- 
selves, men whose political creed might almost be summed up as a 
twofold dread of Ancien Regime and new democracy. A triumph of 
the old nobility might mean a resumption of church lands or a res- 
toration of privileges. A triumph of the mob leaders would endanger 
property and profits. Either would be unfavorable to middle class 
enrichment, and so the middle classes returned a majority favorably 
disposed to the existing state of things, to the Revolution so far as it 
had gone, so far but no further. 

In a sense there was a conservative majority. But the old conser- 
vative party, which included, perhaps, a third of the old constituent, 
was unrepresented in the new legislature. Emigration and absten- 
tions, rather than numerical weakness, prevented the aristocratic and 
ultra-clerical party from securing any representatives in the Assembly. 
That party was still strong in the country. It possessed much wealth 
and much influence, and an assembly in which it was not represented 
could not really represent France. But its members stood outside 
the legislature, forming plots, intriguing with foreign powers, and 
occupying places in the king's ministry. They were thus a source of 
national weakness and disunion, and far more harmful than they 
would have been if they had been fairly represented in the legislature. 1 

It is evident that such a body as the new legislature would fall an 
easy prey to the men of extremes. The leaders of the Jacobins, indeed, 
Sieves, Robespierre, and others, were also excluded from the Assembly. 
The leadership of the Left within its ranks fell to the men known as 
the Girondists, from the fact that several of them represented the 
Gironde department. These were enthusiastic but somewhat vision- 
ary democrats, of whom the types are Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gen- 
sonne\ Already they would gladly have substituted a republic for the 
monarchy. They did not scruple to encourage mob demonstrations 
and even rioting for the purpose of influencing and intimidating the 
government; and they thus helped to raise a power which they could 

1 Symes, op. eft. , pp. 59, 60. 



vni THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 163 

not control. They were mostly young and inexperienced men, elo- 
quent, and to some extent dupes of their own eloquence. Their fine 
phrases were largely borrowed from ancient writers, who ranted about 
liberty in the days of the Roman despotism. They recognized the 
need of raising the national character in order to fit France for demo- 
cratic institutions ; and they came to think that they could best do 
this by involving the country in a war with the tyrants of Europe, a 
war which they fondly hoped would draw out heroic qualities, such as 
the ancient Greek republics displayed in their contest with the Persian 
despotism. But little practical sagacity could be hoped from the 
dreamers who deliberately adopted such a programme as this. 1 

A third element in the struggle as to who should seize 
the executive power, which was falling from the hands 
of the king, was found in the Paris Commune, ready to join 
the Jacobins in the duel with the Girondists to the death, 
though quite ready to turn their arms afterwards against 
them. Before the Revolution Paris was divided into 
twenty-one quarters. Louis XVI. in his regulation of 
April 13, 1789, for the convocation of the States-General, 
divided it into sixty districts. Next the law of 27th June, 
1790, created a new division into forty-eight sections, 
which continued till 1860. These sections elected the 
members of the municipality. Nominally only the active 
citizens (aged twenty-five years and paying taxes equal to 
three days' work) took part in the section meetings, but 
all citizens and even women came as spectators, and the 
active citizens fell off till only fifteen or twenty thousand 
attended out of the eighty-two thousand, and gradually 
even less. At first the sections could only meet upon 
special convocation by the municipal body and were re- 
quired to disperse as soon as the elections were over, but 
gradually their meetings became more frequent, and in 
July, 1792, a decree of the Assembly sanctioned the per- 
manence which already existed in fact. 2 

1 Ibid, j p. 61. 

a La Rousse, Encyclopedic, articles "Commune" and "Sections de 
Paris." 



164 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

On the 26th of July, 1792, came the manifesto of the 
Duke of Brunswick, preparatory to the invasion of France. 
It threatened any city which resisted with the fullest rigors 
of war, and declared that Paris should be totally destroyed 
if any harm happened to the king or queen. This exactly 
suited the purposes of the Jacobin minority, who were 
organizing a " directory of insurrection." The Girondist 
leaders of the Assembly, with the weakness which attempts 
to avert the wrath of a mob by partially granting its de- 
mands, had given leave to the section meetings to sit en 
permanence, and the twenty-eight most violent of these 
chose commissioners, who assembled at the Hotel de Ville 
and displaced by force the regular municipality, which 
had been elected the year before and was not sufficiently 
revolutionary. The next step was to demoralize the 
National Guard by decreeing that all citizens, passive as 
well as active, should be enrolled in its ranks, and fur- 
nished with pikes till better arms could be provided. 

Thus was prepared the attack on the Tuileries of the 
10th of August. The king and his family took refuge 
with the Assembly, where only 284 of the 749 deputies 
ventured to attend, and a deputation of the commissioners 
from the Hotel de Ville, backed by the mob, compelled the 
Assembly to suspend the king from the so-called executive 
power, and to issue orders for the election of a National 
Convention to determine what was to be done next. And 
thus the old monarchy of the Bourbons in France came to 
an end. 

It has been much disputed whether the massacres 
in the prisons on September 2 and 3 were a part of the 
organized scheme. The probability seems to be that all 
the authorities were paralyzed by fear and suspicion. The 
Assembly, the ministers, the National Guards and the mu- 
nicipality alike allowed the dreadful deeds to be done by 
a mere handful of men. At the outside there were not 



vni THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 155 

200 murderers, the official list says 173, and yet not a 
single battalion of the National Guard, not a single group 
of men collected by chance and seeing the terrible scene, 
interfered to prevent its completion. As Mr. Symes says : 

If we attribute these massacres to a sudden outburst of mob fury, 
fear, and suspicion, we may fairly regard them simply as an illustration 
of the condition to which the common people of Paris had been re- 
duced under the old regime. Their characters had been formed, not 
in the few Revolutionary months, but during the long years and suc- 
cessive generations that preceded the outburst. And we may say that 
even these and the later atrocities prove how much the Revolution 
was needed in order to destroy a social system which brutalized the 
masses to such an extent. 1 

It is not necessary to go into the history of the Con- 
vention, with the execution of the king and queen ; the 
fierce struggle for power between the Girondists and the 
Jacobins over the inert and floating mass of the Marsh or 
Plain ; the final defeat and destruction of the former and 
the supremacy of the more energetic and determined fac- 
tion ; the terrible Committee of Public Safety, the Repre- 
sentatives on Mission, the Revolutionary Tribunal, and the 
Reign of Terror. Amid the tremendous conflict of inter- 
nal forces, acting under the pressure from without, it was 
a perfectly natural evolution of executive power by the 
means and methods which had been preparing in the pre- 
vious centuries, and especially in the one just drawing to a 
close. The greater the ideality and force of imagination 
combined with strength of character in a people, the fiercer 
the struggle was certain to be. Its character can hardly 
be shown more clearly than in the three men whose names 
have perhaps acquired the greatest prominence, — Marat, 
Danton, and Robespierre. All were educated men and 
all inspired by principle much more than personal self- 
seeking. Marat, the most repulsive of the three, was a 
physician of considerable practice. He was also a stu~ 
1 Op. at., p. 79. 



156 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

dent of science and had written a number of works, some 
of which had been translated into German. But he was 
of a quarrelsome temper, and extremely unpopular among 
scientific men from the unsparing character of his criti- 
cisms. His inspiring passion seems to have been pity 
for the poor, and consequent hatred of the bourgeoisie and 
Royalists, which rose to a point of pitiless frenzy and 
made him a chief promoter of the violent deeds of the 
Commune. Perhaps his most marked characteristic was 
suspicion, and it was one which met but too well the tem- 
per of the time. His position was largely owing to his 
journalistic skill, as shown in the Ami du Peuple. It 
is remarkable that he, as well as Danton and Robespierre, 
took a decided stand at the outset against a foreign war. 

Marat worked himself into a perfect rage on the subject of the war, 
and regarded it as an infamous conspiracy on the part of the bourgeois 
Constitutionalists and the Royalists to oppress the poor of the country. 
Like all men of statesmanlike mind, he clearly perceived the course 
events would take. He prophesied that disasters on the part of the 
French army would be followed by the overthrow of royalty and the 
destruction of those who hoped for foreign help in Paris. He also 
declared that an unsuccessful w T ar — and how could it be otherwise 
than unsuccessful with an army in a state of disorganization? — would 
cause disasters, and afterwards the formation of a strong government. 
He echoed the cry of Mirabeau and Danton, "Strength is what we 
want, not a governor." And he proposed that a dictator should be 
appointed with supreme power for a few days, in which to destroy all 
traitors at home and vigorously carry on the war abroad. At this 
bold yet statesmanlike idea the other journalists cried out that Marat 
wished to make himself, or, at other times, wished to make one of his 
friends, Robespierre or Danton, a tyrant or a king. But Marat an- 
swered, " Men who are freely given sovereignty are not the men who 
become tyrants, but the men who seize sovereignty for themselves." 1 

Danton was a far nobler character. Born in 1759, he 

was but thirty-five at the time of his death. He came to 

Paris in 1780, married the daughter of a tax official in 

good circumstances, and made an affectionate husband. 

1 Stephens, op. cit., Vol. II., Chap. ILL 



vm THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 157 

He bought, as was then the custom, a prominent legal 
position and gained a lucrative practice. If the moving 
passion of Marat was pity, that of D ant on was patriotism. 
In April, 1791, he gave up his profession and sold his 
office, abandoning a certain future, at once honorable and 
remunerative, to devote himself to public affairs and the 
Revolution, which he saw involved a total renewal of the 
social order. Less of his speeches are preserved than of 
many others, because almost alone among the public men 
of the time he spoke extemporaneously. At first opposed 
to the war, he afterwards threw himself into it with energy. 
Far from being bloodthirsty he was of a humane disposi- 
tion, but he saw that energy was the one most important 
thing, and that inspiring fear was the only possible way 
of arriving at the despotic rule which was necessary to 
bring the war and the Revolution to success. It was he 
who chiefly planned the attack on the Tuileries on the 
10th of August, 1792, but it seems to be admitted that 
he did not encourage, though as Minister of Justice he 
must in a measure be held responsible for, the massacres 
of September. The character of the man is strongly 
indicated by certain passages from his speeches. " What 
do I care for reputation ! Let France be free and my 
name disgraced. " "Rather a hundred times be the 
guillotined than the guillotiner." " I would embrace my 
enemy for my country, to whom I would give my body 
to be devoured. " And to those who advised him to seek 
safety in flight, " Fly ! can one carry away his country on 
the soles of his shoes ? " 

Dan ton, immediately after the fall of the Girondins, had thrown 
himself with extraordinary energy into the work to be done. The 
first great task in a great city so agitated by anarchical ferment had 
been to set up a strong central authority. In this genuinely political 
task Danton was prominent. He was not a member of the Commit- 
tee of Public Safety when that body was renewed in the shape that 
speedily made its name so redoubtable all over the world. This was 



158 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the result of a self-denying ordinance which he had imposed upon 
himself. It was he who proposed that the powers of the committee 
should be those of a dictator, and that it should have copious funds at 
its disposal. In order to keep himself clear of any personal suspicion 
he announced his resolution not to belong to the body which he had 
thus done his best to make supreme in the State. His position during 
the autumn of 1793 was that of a powerful supporter and inspirer 
from without of the government which he had been foremost in set- 
ting up. Danton was not a great practical administrator and contriver, 
like Carnot, for instance. But he had the gift of raising in all who 
heard him an heroic spirit of patriotism and fiery devotion, and he 
had a clear eye and a cool judgment in the tempestuous emergencies 
which arose in such appalling succession. His distinction was that 
he accepted the revolutionary forces instead of blindly denouncing 
them as the Girondins had done. After these forces had shaken 
down the throne and then, by driving away the Girondins, had made 
room for a vigorous government, Danton perceived the expediency of 
making all haste to an orderly state. Energetic prosecution of the 
war and gradual conciliation of civil hatreds had been the two marks 
of his policy ever since the fall of the monarchy. The first of these 
objects was fulfilled abundantly, partly owing to the energy with 
which he called for the arming of the whole nation against its 
enemies. His whole mind was now given to the second of them. 
But the second of them, alas, was desperate. 1 

Danton fell a victim to the rivalries of the Commune, 
the Committees, and the Convention largely because he 
failed to exert in his own behalf that energy which he 
had so lavishly put forth in the cause of his country. 

Robespierre, like Danton, of whom he was the senior 
by a year, was bred to the law and achieved success by 
his own efforts. In early life he had resigned a position 
as judge rather than pronounce a sentence of death. In 
the elections of 1789 he took the lead in drawing up the 
cahier, or table of grievances, of the province of Artois, 
secured the support of the country electors, and, though just 
past thirty years of age, poor and without influence, he 
was elected fifth deputy for the province of Artois to the 
States-General. If the moving passion of Marat was pity, 

1 Encyclopedia Britannica, article "Danton." 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 159 

and that of Danton patriotism, that of Robespierre was in 
the social theories of Rousseau. Mirabeau said of him, 
" That young man will go far. He believes what he 
says." 

Without the courage and wide tolerance which make a statesman, 
without the greatest qualities of an orator, without the belief in him- 
self which marks a great man, nervous, timid, and suspicious, Robes- 
pierre yet believed in the doctrines of Rousseau with all his heart, 
and would have gone to death for them ; and in the belief that they 
would eventually succeed and regenerate France and mankind, he was 
ready to work with unwearied patience. 1 

His personal qualities gained for him success at the 
Jacobin club. 

His fanaticism won for him supporters ; his singularly sweet and 
sympathetic voice gained him hearers, and his upright life attracted 
the admiration of all. His private life was always respectable; he 
was always emphatically a gentleman and man of culture, and even a 
little bit of a dandy. In 1792 he had indignantly thrown from his 
head a red cap which one of his admirers had placed upon it ; he had 
never pandered to the depraved tastes of the mob by using their lan- 
guage, and to the last day of his life he wore knee breeches and silk 
stockings, and had his hair powdered. Scrupulously honest, truthful, 
and charitable in his habits and manner of life, he was simple and 
laborious. He was not a man gifted with flashes of genius, but one 
who had to think much before he came to a decision, and he worked 
hard all his life. 2 

It should be added that he was distinctly of a religious 
temperament, and set his face against the atheistic ten- 
dencies of the time. The effect of this appeared in his 
" Feast of the Supreme Being," which furnished the ele- 
ment of ridicule that contributed to his fall. It has a 
deep significance that such a man as this should have 
held the foremost place in the Paris Commune and the 
Jacobin club, and have outlived all his leading competi- 
tors for power. It is difficult to understand how his 
audience of fifteen hundred at the Jacobins' could have 

1 Ibid., article "Robespierre." 2 Ibid. 



160 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

sat through his long and elaborate harangues, which, 
though not without literary merit, are prosy, smelling of 
the lamp, and stuffed with classical allusions. The secret 
probably was that he was putting into logical form what 
these fifteen hundred felt and believed. One is reminded 
of the Scotch Covenanters listening for hours to the ser- 
mons of their divines, based on the fierce theology of the 
Old Testament. 

Although Robespierre was elected a member of the 
Committee of Public Safety, yet the majority, who were 
men of action, despised more than they feared him, as did 
Danton, and were entirely free from his influence. It is 
necessary to dwell upon the fact that Robespierre was 
always in a minority in the great committee in order to 
absolve him from the blame of being the inventor of the 
enormities of the Terror, as well as to deprive him of the 
glory of the gallant stand made against European arms. 
The Terror was the embodiment of the idea of Danton, 
that it was necessary to resort to extreme measures to 
keep France united and strong at home in order to meet 
successfully her enemies upon the frontier. The idea was 
systematized by the Committee of Public Safety without 
much consideration as to who were to be the victims. 
With the actual organization of the Terror Robespierre 
had little or nothing to do ; its two great engines, the 
revolutionary tribunal, and the absolute power in the 
provinces of the representatives on mission, were in exist- 
ence before he joined the committee. The reason why he 
is almost universally regarded as its creator, and the dom- 
inant spirit of the Committee of Public Safety, is not hard 
to discover. The active members were not conspicuous 
speakers in the Convention, nor were they the idols of any 
section of the populace, but Robespierre had a fanatical 
following among the Jacobins, and was admittedly the 
most popular orator in the Convention. His panegyrics 



vin THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 161 

on the system of revolutionary government, and his praise 
of virtue, led his hearers to believe that the system of 
Terror, instead of being monstrous, was absolutely laud- 
able ; his pure life and admitted incorruptibility threw a 
lustre on the committee of which he was a member, and 
his colleagues offered no opposition to his posing as their 
representative and reflecting some of his personal popu- 
larity upon them, so long as he did not interfere with their 
work. Moreover, he alone never left Paris, whilst all the 
others, except Barer e, were constantly on missions to the 
army, the navy, and the provinces. 

It was after Robespierre by the destruction of Hebert 
and his supporters had acquired full control of the Paris 
Commune, and by that of Danton and his immediate 
friends the full control of the Convention and its commit- 
tees, that he began to falter and prove unequal to his task. 

He said himself on one occasion, " I was not made to rule. I was 
made to combat the enemies of the Revolution," and so the possession 
of supreme power produced in him no feeling of exultation. On the 
contrary, it preyed upon his spirits, and made him fancy himself the 
object of universal hatred. A guard now slept nightly at his house, 
and followed him in all his walks. Two pistols lay ever at his side. 
He would not eat food till some one else had tasted from the dish. 
His jealous fears were wakened by every sign of popularity in an- 
other. Even the successes of his generals filled him with anxiety, 
lest they should raise up dangerous mobs. 1 

Fear produced bloodthirstiness. In the three months 
between Danton's death and his own the executions were 
about two thousand. Revolt against such rule could not 
be long delayed, and he followed his own victims to the 
guillotine. Anarchy had thus made its first call for des- 
potism, and the first response had been a failure. A 
stronger hand was needed, and was sure to come. 

It is worthy of remark that of the three men here 
referred to not one attempted to enrich himself. 

1 Symes, op. cit., p. 128. 



CHAPTER IX 

FRANCE IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

TTTITH the fall of Robespierre the Reign of Terror 
* ™ came to an end. 1 The Commune of Paris through 
the destruction of its leaders had lost its power, and the 
Jacobin club was abolished. The nation had submitted 
to arbitrary and cruel rule from the fear of foreign inva- 
sion and royalist conspiracy, much as in the Civil War in 
the United States the people tacitly submitted to four 
years of military despotism. But as the gravest danger 
passed away humanity and the rights of civil society 
reasserted themselves. The Convention, by limiting the 
power of its committees, resumed its position as the real 
legal authority in France. There was a spirit of lassitude 
and reaction much like that which followed in England 
upon the death of Cromwell, and if there had been in 
France a body of aristocracy accustomed to work together, 
to feel that their strength lay in moderation, and to exer- 
cise some real control over the Crown, a restoration of 
royalty might possibly have taken place. But all this 

1 We do well to speak with horror of the Reign of Terror and of the 
Revolutionary Tribunal, which sent about three thousand persons to 
death. Yet even here we may remind ourselves that this terribly large 
number shrinks into insignificance when compared with the innocent 
persons hurried to a more painful death in needless wars by the ambition 
of rulers whom the world delights to honor. Let us clear our minds of 
cant, and neither extenuate nor exaggerate the horrors ; and take what 
comfort we can from the knowledge that the chief actors honestly 
believed they were promoting the good of France and of humanity ; that 
the victims almost all met their death with courage and dignity ; that the 
dim millions of Frenchmen gained greatly by the Revolution as a whole, 
and suffered little from the Reign of Terror. — J. E. Symes, op. eft., 
Chap. XIII. 

162 



chap, ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 163 

was wanting. The nobles were in exile with no thought 
but revenge and the reclamation of their old privileges. 
The clergy had been stripped of their offices, while the 
immense transfer of landed property had fixed an almost 
impassable gulf between the old and the new. The re- 
action was largely in the hands of the new rich, and the 
" Gilded Youth " were almost as much of a mob as those 
whom they attacked. As the reaction spread through 
France the cruelties and the violence of the Royalists 
were almost as great as those of the Revolutionists had 
been. For a year an uncertain struggle continued be- 
tween the two forces, and it is noticeable that the first 
appearance of Bonaparte on the scene was in the sup- 
pression of a Royalist insurrection against the Convention 
on October 4, 1795. The reactionary spirit still gained 
ground so fast, however, that the Convention made haste 
to meet it, and established a new constitution. 

The experience of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, and 
of the Convention until the formation of the Committee of Public 
Safety, had shown the utter inadequacy of intrusting supreme execu- 
tive and administrative authority to an unwieldy, deliberative assem- 
bly. The founders of the United States of America had invested 
their President with power resembling that exercised by kings. The 
constitution of 1791, in its jealousy of the monarchy, had practically 
deprived the king and his ministers of all real authority while leav- 
ing him the entire responsibility. The constitution of 1793 placed 
all executive authority in the hands of the legislature. The consti- 
tution of the Year III. (1795) endeavored to separate the executive 
and legislative authorities. 

Under the new arrangement the executive was placed in the hands 
of five directors. One was to retire every year, and was not eligible 
for reelection ; his successor was to be chosen by the legislature. In 
order to secure an entire separation between the members of the 
Directory and of the legislature, no member of the latter could be 
elected a director until twelve months had elapsed after the resigna- 
tion of his seat. The directors were to appoint the ministers, who 
were to have no connection whatever with the legislature, and 
who were to act as agents of the directors. The individual directors 
were to exercise no authority in their own names. They were to 



164 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

meet daily, and the will of the majority was to be taken as the will 
of the whole. They were to elect a president every month, who was 
to act as their mouthpiece at the reception of foreign ambassadors, 
and on all occasions of ceremony. The control of internal admin- 
istration, the management of the armies and fleets, and all questions 
of foreign policy, were left entirely to the directors. But treaties, 
declarations of war, and similar acts had to be ratified by the legis- 
lature. The directors had nothing whatever to do with the work of 
legislation and their assent was not needed to new laws. With 
regard to the revenue, the administration of the finances and of the 
treasury rested with the directors, but they could not impose fresh 
taxes without the assent of the legislature. 

The legislature under the constitution of the Year III. consisted 
of two chambers — the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five 
Hundred. It is a curious commentary upon the debates which took 
place iu the Constituent Assembly of 1789, when the establishment of 
two chambers was rejected with scorn as being an obvious imitation 
of the English Parliament, that in 1795 this very principle was almost 
unanimously adopted. The delay necessitated by a law being obliged 
to pass before two distinct deliberative bodies now appeared most 
advantageous, when compared with the headlong precipitation which 
had marked all the earlier stages of the Revolution. 

The Council of Ancients (two hundred and fifty in number) was 
to consist of men forty-five years old and upwards, and therefore 
presumably not liable to be carried away by sudden bursts of 
enthusiasm. For the Council of Five Hundred there was no limit 
of age. One-third of the two councils was to retire yearly ; deputies 
were to be chosen by an elaborate system of primary and secondary 
assemblies held in each department of France, and a property qualifi- 
cation was demanded both for the electors and the deputies. The 
Council of Five Hundred had allotted to it as its special function 
the initiation of all fresh taxation and the revision of all money bills. 
The Council of Ancients was the court of appeal in all diplomatic 
questions, such as the declaration of war. In actual legislation the 
consent of the majority of both chambers was needed for a new law. 
For their most important function — the yearly election of a new 
director — the two chambers were to form one united assembly. 1 

It was the intention of intriguers, some of them possibly 
Royalists, but most of them bourgeois or aristocrats who 
had personal reasons for desiring revenge, to take advan- 
tage of this constitution to overthrow the Republic. The 
Convention, knowing this and that the mass of Frenchmen 

1 H. Morse Stephens, l - History of Europe," 1789-1815. pp. 159-163. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 165 

were sincerely republican, decreed that two -thirds of both 
councils should be taken from their own body. The 
decree produced the rising of 18th Fructidor (October 5) 
which was quelled by the cannons of Bonaparte. 

By a series of political tricks a majority of Revolutionists 
was secured in both bodies, and the Directory was made 
up of five regicides. The weakness of this multiple ex- 
ecutive, attacked on one side by the Revolutionists, and 
on the other by the Royalists, made government impos- 
sible, and showed how the energy of Danton and the 
Committee of Public Safety had at least had the merit 
of effectiveness for its purpose. The mass of assignats 
was then sinking to its final extinction, and the distress 
through the country was very great. At the same time, 
as in all violent fluctuations of currency, there was a class 
which had made money easily and quickly, and luxury, 
extravagance, and dissipation came to aggravate the dis- 
content. The Royalist tide continued to advance, when 
some regiments were despatched by Bonaparte ostensibly 
to bring conquered standards to Paris, but really to come 
to the aid of the Directory. On the 4th of September, 
1797, Augereau surrounded the Tuileries with his troops, 
and ordered the Royalist deputies to be arrested : upon 
which eleven members of the Council of the Ancients, 
forty-two of the Five Hundred, and two directors were 
sentenced to deportation. 1 For the first time the funda- 
mental defect of the Revolution, anarchy, after desperate 
efforts at remedy by committees of public bodies, found 
its natural outcome and corrective in military force. 
Thenceforward the councils were the obedient servants 
of the directors. Strength here, however, was wanting, 
and affairs did not improve. 2 

1 "Outlines of Universal History," from the German of Dr. George 
Weber, Boston, 1858, § 563. 

2 It is curious to observe the swaying of the conflict between executive 



166 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Of the second Coalition of Europe against France, under 
which Italy was lost, only one word need be said. 

The republicans of Naples were now visited by a frightful punish- 
ment. Supported by Admiral Nelson, who lay with his fleet before 
the city, and who, seduced by the charms of Lady Hamilton, allowed 
himself to be made the instrument of an ignominious vengeance, the 

and legislative power. At the annual change of the composition of 
the Directory which took place in 1799, a considerable alteration had 
been made. The Directory, which had seemed so strong after the Revo- 
lution in 1797, had been considerably weakened by the behavior of the 
directors themselves. The choice of Sieyes by the legislature and his 
acceptance indicated an increase of power in the body of which he was 
the idol. — Stephens, op. cit., 1789-1815, p. 209. 

On the 18th Fructidor, Year V. (4th September, 1797), the executive 
in the form of the Directory had crushed and partially destroyed the 
legislature, and on the 80th Prairial, Year VII. (18th June, 1799), the 
legislature had acted in the same way towards the executive. By the con- 
stitution of the Year VIII., which was submitted to the people December 
14, 1799, the executive power was acknowledged to be supreme. 

The keystone of the new constitution was the Consulate. There 
were to be three consuls nominated for ten years, but these officials were 
not to be equal in authority, as had been the case with the directors. 
On the contrary, the first consul was to be the perpetual president and 
perpetual representative of the governing triumvirate. All administra- 
tive power was placed in his hands, and the second and third consuls 
were little more than his chief assistants. The consuls acting together 
nominated the ministers and also the Council of State, which was in- 
tended to be at the same time an administrative tribunal of appeal and 
the originating source in matters of legislation. 

In the work of legislation the Council was supplemented by the 
Tribunate and the Legislative Body. All laws prepared by the Council 
of State were first submitted to the Tribunate, which was composed of 
one hundred members. The Tribunate could neither reject nor amend 
a law, but decided whether to support or oppose the project before the 
Legislative Body. The Legislative Body consisted of three hundred 
deputies chosen by certain electoral assemblies formed by a complicated 
scheme out of the taxpayers of the departments. By this scheme, after 
three series of elections, what was termed a national list was drawn up. 
From this national list the Senate chose both the Legislative Body and 
the Tribunate. The Legislative Body alone voted the taxes. In legisla- 
tive matters it played the part of a national jury, listening to the argu- 
ments for or against brought forward by the Tribunate on every project 
prepared by the Council of State, and deciding in every case without 
discussion. The Legislative Body alone could give a project of the Coun- 
cil of State the character of a law. The Senate was composed of eighty 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 167 

priesthood and the royal government practised deeds before which 
the atrocities of the French Reign of Terror retreat into obscurity. 
After the murderings and the plundering^ of the lazzaroni were over, 
the business of the judge, the jailer, and the executioner commenced. 
Every partisan, adherent, or favorer of the republican institutions 
was prosecuted. Upwards of four thousand of the most respectable 
and refined men and females died upon the scaffold or in frightful 
dungeons. For it was precisely the noblest portion of the nation, 
who wished to redeem the people from their degradation and igno- 
rance, that had joined themselves with patriotic enthusiasm to the 
new system. 1 

Indeed, down to the sixth decade of this century, the 
kingdom of Naples has furnished examples of the effects 
of despotic royal rule quite equal as an offset to the 
violence of the Paris mob ; with this difference, that 
there is always an abundance of cultivated literary talent 
to denounce the latter, while the former attracts compara- 
tively little attention. 

In the summer of 1799, Bonaparte, abandoning his 
army in Egypt, returned to Paris, overthrew the govern- 
ment, and established the Consulate, of which he was the 
real head and which was speedily followed by the Empire. 
Authentic accounts of the scene at St. Cloud show that 
even his audacity quailed before the crime ; that failure 
was hanging in the balance and was prevented only by 
the coolness of his brother Lucien. Bonaparte had de- 
veloped into Napoleon. A second Cromwell had driven 
out a new Rump Parliament. Again it had been shown 
that a strong executive is the first necessity of all gov- 
ernment. The problem with which France was to 
wrestle in the next hundred years for the benefit of the 
world was whether this executive should be an arbitrary 

members nominated for life by the consuls. Its duties were to choose the 
members of the Tribunate and Legislative Body from the national list, 
and to decide whether any law or measure of the government was con- 
trary to the constitution. If it decided that such law or measure was 
unconstitutional, it had authority to annul it. — H. Morse Stephens, op. 
cit., p. 213. i Weber, " Outlines of Universal History," § 565. 



168 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

despot, bending a nation as slaves to his will, or a consti- 
tutional ruler, exercising his power for the real welfare 
of the people and in accordance with their will. 

One thing the new ruler did which constituted a wholly 
new departure in government, and from the point of view 
of this work may be said to be the best thing he ever 
did. This was the attempt to base his power upon the 
expressed will of the people. The vote on the acceptance 
of the constitution of the Year VIII., which was sub- 
mitted to the people December 14, 1799, resulted in 
3,911,107 ayes against 1569 noes. In May, 1802, on the 
question of making Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul for 
life, there were 3,568,000 ayes to 9000 noes, while on May 
18, 1804, a majority of more than 3,000,000 votes ratified 
the offer by the Senate of the title of Emperor. 

With the military career of Napoleon this work has 
nothing to do. It may be remarked, however, that after 
the sacrifice of nearly two millions of Frenchmen, to say 
nothing of their opponents, in the attempt at a conquest 
of Europe, and after an amount of suffering compared 
with which that of the Revolution hardly deserves men- 
tion, he left France smaller than he received it. One of 
the bitter taunts with which he expelled the Directory 
was by asking " What have you done for France ? " A 
member of that Directory, Gohier, lived to reply after 
Napoleon's fall that the Republic at least kept foreign 
enemies from her borders ; that it was left for the mighty 
emperor to deliver Paris over to invading legions. It is 
well to observe that a second empire achieved the same 
result. One plea largely dwelt upon is that the first 
Napoleon broke up the old despotisms and paved the way 
for a new and modern society. Apart from the fact that 
France received no adequate return for all her sacrifices 
in this respect, can there be a question that she would 
have achieved far higher results in the same direction by 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 169 

the consolidation of civil liberty, and the establishment 
of peaceful constitutional government ? If it be said that 
that was impossible, it forms no argument against popular 
government in itself, but only as to the difficulty of 
establishing it, as to which there is no dispute. 

As to the internal rule of Napoleon there can be but 
one verdict. Everything of the old rSgime was restored 
which the Revolution had not finally destroyed. There 
could no longer be a hereditary nobility with feudal 
privileges, nor an immense ecclesiastical corporation own- 
ing a large part of the land of the country. But no such 
centralized despotism was exercised by Louis XIV. in the 
plenitude of his power. The government of the prefects 
amply replaced that of the intendants. The conscription 
was an engine of which, in its terribly levelling force, the 
old rSgime knew nothing. Napoleon, by the Concordat 
with the Pope, restored the priesthood in all its pomp and 
ceremony ; but for its religious functions he cared noth- 
ing. It was merely to be a powerful instrument in his 
hands for acting upon the minds and securing the obedi- 
ence of his subjects. For elective judges he substituted 
those appointed by the executive power and made them 
irremovable, but only after five years' probation had shown 
them to be of a kind suited to his purposes. 

The Empire was not a society, it was a vast hierarchy of functionaries 
and soldiers, surmounted by a man thinking, acting, and speaking for 
the country reduced to obey and be silent. 1 

A good illustration of the character of his rule may be 
given in some particulars of an account of his educa- 
tional system. 2 

"In the establishment of a teaching body," he said in the Council 
of State, " my principal object is to have a means of directing political 

1 Charles de Mazade, " Portraits," etc., Guizot, p. 40. 

2 H. Taine, " Le Regime Moderne," Livre VI., L'Ecole. 



170 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

and moral opinion. It should be so constituted as to furnish informa- 
tion about every child from the age of nine years." 

With a view to this, he assumed the monopoly of public 
instruction ; the sole right to manufacture and issue it, 
like salt and tobacco. Throughout the Empire it is in- 
trusted exclusively to the University. No school, no 
establishment of instruction of any kind, — superior, 
secondary, primary, special, general, collateral, lay, or 
ecclesiastical, — can be formed outside of the imperial 
University, or without the authorization of its chief. 
They must pay also. The State grants licenses. Every 
graduate who opens a course of letters or science must 
first pay 75 francs in Paris and 50 in the provinces. Be- 
sides this tax, every master of a boarding-school must pay 
to obtain the indispensable certificate, in Paris 150 francs, 
100 in the provinces ; the chief of an institution in Paris 
pays 600 francs, in the provinces 400, and the certificate 
is only for ten years, and must then be renewed. As for 
his pupils, whether paying in full, or half, or even free, 
the University collects upon each of them a tax equal to 
a twentieth of the full fees. The master must collect and 
return the tax accurately, both as to price and number, 
under heavy penalties. 

At first Napoleon was obliged to tolerate private schools 
because his lyceums did not succeed. Families had no 
confidence in them. The discipline is too military, the 
education not parental, the professors indifferent and 
worldly functionaries, the ushers and tutors old non-com- 
missioned officers, rough and coarse, the state scholars 
unfit companions. As the best class of scholars did not 
come to the lyceums, they must be made to come. Pri- 
vate schools must not teach studies beyond a certain 
standard, and only such as the lyceums did not teach ; 
while for the rest, they must take their scholars back and 
forth to the lyceums daily. After November, 1812, pri- 



ix F1KST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 171 

vate schools could only take scholars after the lyceums 
were full, and, as there were one hundred of them, and 
the complement was fixed at three hundred pupils, only 
the surplus of thirty thousand could go into private insti- 
tutions. Add to these things that all private, as well as 
public, schools were governed by the University : their 
prospectuses and regulations, personnel and discipline, 
spirit and material of instruction, details of study and 
recreation ; all in these so-called free schools were fixed 
by the University under the direction of the Grand Master, 
himself the creature of the emperor. 

It was the same with the public instructors, forming, 
as Napoleon called them, a corps of Jesuits, not of the 
Church but of the State. They were regularly enlisted 
for three, six, and nine years, and could not leave without 
long notice given. They wore uniforms, were regularly 
promoted, and, from 1808, even celibacy was enforced. 
"No woman can be received or lodged in the lyceums." 
The instructors were subjected to severe discipline, even 
that of arrest. As the fathers had ideas of independence, 
the men of the younger generation were placed in normal 
schools, where, to fit them for teachers, they were subjected 
to grinding discipline and the most restricted studies. 

As for the instruction itself it was to produce good 
soldiers for his armies, good functionaries for his adminis- 
tration, and good and zealous subjects for his service. 

All the schools of the University will take for their base of in- 
struction fidelity to the emperor, to the imperial monarchy as the 
depositary of the happiness of the people, to the Napoleonic dynasty, 
conservative of the unity of France, and of all the liberal ideas pro- 
claimed by the constitution. 1 

Drum beatings, military drill, defiling at command, 
uniforms, laces, and the like, became in 1811 obligatory, 

1 Taine, op. cit. 



172 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

not only for the lyceums and colleges, but also for private 
institutions, upon pain of being closed up. 

For primary schools the State did nothing except to 
release them from payments to the University, which it 
was too difficult and too unpopular with the peasants to 
collect. The parents and the communes must organize 
them, bear the expense, find and engage the teachers. 
The government only requires through the prefects that 
the instruction shall be of the right kind. The inspectors 
will take care that the primary schools teach nothing but 
reading, writing, and arithmetic. If they go beyond that, 
if they teach the first elements of Latin, of geometry, of 
geography, of history, they become secondary schools and 
are subjected to University fees, military discipline, uni- 
forms, and other demands. The spirit of the primary 
schools may be judged from one phrase, which seven or eight 
hundred thousand children recited to their teachers before 
reciting it to the cure : " We owe especially to Napoleon I., 
oar emperor, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military ser- 
vice, the tributes ordered for the defence of the Empire 
and his throne. For it is he whom God has raised up in 
difficult circumstances to reestablish the public worship and 
the holy religion of our fathers, and to be its protector." 

In the higher instruction all was for practice, nothing 
for theory. There were no students of law but only of 
the laws, not for judging them but only for applying them; 
no principles of science but only observation and applica- 
tion ; not general culture but technical education. Society 
does not need learned men and philosophers, " ideologues," 
but those who can build a bridge, an edifice, can care for 
the sick or perforin an amputation, draw a contract, con- 
duct a procedure, judge in a lawsuit. Add to these a cen- 
sorship of the press, of newspapers, pamphlets, and books, 
hardly less severe than that existing in Russia to-day. 1 

1 Taine, op. cit. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 173 

History, in judging the total of Napoleon's career, will pronounce 
it sterile and disastrous. If one seeks to discover what he really 
wished, what he did, what he left, one finds nothing. He acted with- 
out object, lived upon chance, bestirred himself in a vacuum. He may 
have saved France, but to allow her to fall deeper than before. He 
did not give his great mind to the service of one grand idea. He has 
not attached his name to any work. He rendered no service to human- 
ity. He represented nothing in history. He pursued that insensate 
and barbarous thing, war for the sake of war. He piled up conquests 
after the manner of the ancient Eastern despots. 

Napoleon was not a statesman because he had no political idea. 
And what must we say if, instead of placing ourselves at the point of 
view of French politics, we wish to judge him from that of civilization. 
Civilization is composed of moral ideas, and he misunderstood them 
all. What contempt of humanity ! What ignorance of its instincts 
and its needs! What a misconception of modern society! What 
contempt of everything spiritual ! He knew only force, and in matters 
of thought only that which serves force. He trampled under foot all 
rights. As he understood only the lower parts of government, so he 
understood in civil society only the material elements. He restored 
the Church, but only to keep it under his hand and govern it. He re- 
organized the Institute, but he conceived eloquence, poetry, and litera- 
ture only as charged with burning an eternal incense in his honor. 
He gave us a code, but he refused us institutions. He reestablished 
our finances and suppressed our liberties. He showed himself, properly 
speaking, neither virtuous nor vicious. He was one of the southern 
natures in which the moral side of man was simply wanting. That 
is why he is at once so great and so small, so astonishing and so 
vulgar. 1 

The lesson here sought to be enforced is not so much 
that imperial government has its drawbacks as well as 
popular, nor the more important one that government by 
a legislature leads straight through anarchy to despotism, 
but this, that the Napoleonic rule was a continuation and 
even an exaggeration of the old rSgime, as it existed from 
the time of Louis XI. It tended to destroy all political 
character and capacity in the French people ; all ideas or 
habits of local self-government ; all mutual confidence ; 
all power or even conception of the possibility of working 

1 E. Schemer, "Etudes Critiques de la Literature Contemporaine," 
Vol. L, M. Thiers. 



174 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

together for the common good ; all sense of moderation, of 
the advantages of concession to the will of the majority, 
of the fact that peace and tranquillity are important ends 
in themselves and cheaply purchased by great sacrifices of 
individual interest. It sowed everywhere jealousy, sus- 
picion, and treachery. It taught men not to rely upon 
their own exertions or upon mutual support, but upon 
some distant and unseen power, either to be submitted to 
as irresistible fate, or propitiated by cringing flattery and 
obedience. 

There is needed no resort to the character of the French 
people to explain the failure of the government of the 
Restoration. In the first place, it was imposed upon the 
people by foreign conquest in two invasions. For twenty 
years the French nation had been fed to the full with 
military glory. It was a very poor glory, but it was all 
they had, and all the youth and men of middle age had 
been trained by Napoleon, with all the force of his cen- 
tralized power, to regard it as the only thing desirable in 
life. The new government represented to them the last 
degree of humiliation, with the suffering and loss they had 
long inflicted upon others. 

In the second place, it brought back a class who had 
spent twenty years in exile, "had learned nothing and 
forgotten nothing " ; who, understanding nothing of the 
change which had come over the nation, and with very 
little concert of action among themselves, were bent only 
upon restoring things to their old condition. Whatever 
moderation might have existed in 1814 disappeared with 
the second entry after the Hundred Days, and the Royalists 
breathed only vengeance. 1 



1 By the side of the king there burst forth, as it were, a party full of 
resentment and wrath, so much the more dangerous that it entered with 
the intoxication of an unhoped-for victory. Strange that, instead of 
speaking of the misfortunes of the country with dignity as the government 



rx FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 175 

In England at the Restoration the old condition of 
things could be and was reestablished. 1 So in the United 
States, after four years of the most tremendous civil war 
of modern times, the old institutions were such as to re- 
sume their operations, even in the conquered states, on the 
return of peace. But in France there was nothing to 
restore, except the absolute power of the Crown, and that 
was impossible. In England questions of the land were 
settled by the old tribunals. 2 In France, while far greater 
changes had taken place, there were no tribunals whose 
authority would have been recognized for a moment. 

did, instead of aiming to cure the wounds given to the national pride by 
the invasion, it took pleasure in irritating that pride. It boasted of having 
returned by the foreigner, of reigning by the foreigner ■ it made of royalty 
the odious instrument of introducing the Holy Alliance upon French soil. 
Instead of applying itself to reassure the interests created by the Revolu- 
tion and the Empire, it lost no occasion of frightening them, of menacing 
them, and, with a fury of which we can now form no idea, it drew up ad- 
dresses and shouted its demands to the king for "justice," — that is, for 
vengeance. These strange Royalists amused themselves with decrying the 
Charter itself as a work without sincerity, as a dangerous concession 
which royalty was free to withdraw, and, in a word, in their eyes the his- 
tory of France for twenty -five years had been only a grand battle in which 
the Revolution was at first victorious, but which was now to renew the 
ancient social condition by the same means. — Charles de Mazade, 
" Portraits d'Histoire," M. Guizot, etc., himself a writer of decided Royalist 
tendencies. 

1 On the use which might be made of one auspicious moment depended 
the future destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well. 
They forgot old injuries, waived petty scruples, adjourned to a more con- 
venient season all disputes about the reforms which our institutions 
needed, and stood together, Cavaliers and Roundheads, Episcopalians and 
Presbyterians, in firm union for the old laws against military despotism. 
The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of both the 
great parties, reestablished. It was again exactly what it had been when 
Charles L, eighteen years before, withdrew from his capital. All those 
acts of the Long Parliament which had received the royal assent were 
admitted to be still in full force. — Macaulay, op. cit., Chap. II. 

2 Property all over the kingdom was now again changing hands. The 
national sales, not having been confirmed by Parliament, were regarded 
by the tribunals as nullities. The sovereign, the bishops, the deans, the 
chapters, the Royalist nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated 
estates and ejected even purchasers who had given fair prices. — Ibid. 



170 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The new rulers made haste, however, to possess thenv 
selves of the instruments of centralized government which 
had been prepared for them by the Empire. In 1815 the 
Duke of Angouleme said, " We prefer the departments — 
the arbitrary creations of the Revolution — to the prov- 
inces, which under the old rSgime had privileges and 
independence, however limited, of their own." The gov- 
ernment found also in Napoleon's University a much 
easier and more effective instrument of rule than* any 
that existed before 1789. It commanded the services of 
twenty-two thousand primary instructors, of thousands 
of professors and other officials in 36 lyceums, 368 
colleges, 1258 institutions and boarding-schools. Up to 
this time, it was said, its makers, under the Republic or 
the Empire and more or less Jacobin, have managed it for 
their purposes. Let us manage it for ours. The Grand 
Master, instead of a secular functionary, was to be a 
bishop. Indeed, the greatest change was in the matter of 
the Church. When Napoleon as First Consul began the 
reconciliation with the Pope, he demanded that the latter 
should displace all the bishops of the old regime, great 
dignitaries, distinguished for wealth, lands, or hereditary 
nobility, and appoint fifty others selected by and abso- 
lutely subservient to himself, irrespective of their origin. 
The Pope at first demurred, but his shrewdest counsellors 
advised acceptance, pointing out how by this precedent 
of making and unmaking bishops at will, it would in- 
crease the power of the Church. It was a step in that 
extension of spiritual dominion which has reached the 
declaration of papal infallibility and of the Immaculate 
Conception. Meantime Napoleon used the new bishops to 
bend every priest in France to his will. Reports of every 
one were obtained, and any one who failed in zeal found 
himself transferred to a post of hardships and privations. 1 

1 Taine, oj>. eft. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 177 

It was this instrument which was placed in the hands of 
the Royalists. The new charitable orders which grew up 
in France were imbued with this ultramontane spirit, and 
when it is remembered that in 1878 these included thirty 
thousand men and one hundred and twenty-eight thousand 
women, the hostility of the Third Republic is not inex- 
plicable, or the saying of Gambetta that its chief enemy 
was clericalism. 

Louis XVIII. showed his Bourbon spirit by declaring 
that the Charter was "granted" by him to the French 
people, and dating it in the eighteenth year of his reign. 
But he appears to have desired to govern well, and to 
have seen with regret the excesses of his partisans. By 
the Charter dated June 4, 1814, the qualifications for 
electors were fixed at thirty years of age and the pay- 
ment of direct taxes of three hundred francs, and for 
those elected at forty years of age and direct taxes of one 
thousand francs. The electorate was therefore reduced to 
less than one hundred thousand for the whole of France. 
From this body issued, in September, 1815, the Chamber 
known as " Introuvable " from the excess of its Royalist 
zeal. Next came the " White Terror," and a procedure in 
the south equal in violence if not cruelty to that of the 
Revolution, and leading within a year to the dissolution of 
the Chamber. Under the moderate ministries of the Duke 
de Richelieu and M. de Serre matters went fairly well 
till two events came to stimulate again the Royalist fury, 
— one the election to the Chamber, in 1819, of the Abbe 
Gregoire, a constitutional bishop of the Revolution, who 
had advocated and voted for in the Convention the death 
of Louis XVI. ; the other the assassination, in 1820, of the 
king's nephew, the Duke de Berri, by the fanatic Louvel. 
Upon these events followed the Congresses of Laybach 
and Verona, in which the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance 
proclaimed it as their policy to put down all popular 



178 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

movements in Europe, and to maintain the supremacy of 
rule by divine right. In 1823 a French army crossed 
the Pyrenees to aid in reestablishing the government of 
Ferdinand VII. of Spain, the vilest despotism in Europe. 

But if the Royalists went to one extreme, the opposition 
erred as much in the other direction. Republicanism was 
still an unimportant quantity, but even the liberal mon- 
archists, of whom Thiers, a young man just coming into 
notice, formed, an example, attacked the government 
with a sole view to its overthrow. The real trouble was 
not, however, in the violence of the extremes. It was in 
the want of cohesion, of mutual confidence, of discipline, 
and of concert of action in the great mass of the people, 
which in France as in all countries really wanted order, 
good government, and peace. There was, moreover, no 
executive power strong enough to govern, — and this is 
most of all necessary in a centralized system, where all the 
extremities look for guidance to the head, — or sufficiently 
in touch with the mass of public opinion to make its 
strength available. It was again government by a legisla- 
ture with the consequent anarchy which ends in revolution. 

Louis XVIII. died in September, 1824, with gloomy 
forebodings of what was to follow him. His brother and 
successor, Charles X., was and remained the Count of 
Artois, the noble of the old rSgime, whose one idea was to 
restore society to its condition before the Revolution, who 
had been the centre of ultra-royalist intrigue, and looked 
upon the Charter as an instrument in no way binding 
upon him, but which might be disregarded at his pleasure. 

In the elections which followed his accession in the au- 
tumn of 1824 an immense Royalist majority was secured, 
there being but 19 members in opposition out of 430. 
This was a result, however, of the very restricted suffrage, 
and by no means represented the feeling of the country. 
By November, 1827, the tide had turned, and the elections 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 179 

giving a liberal majority the king made a partial concession, 
and some liberal measures were passed under the ministry 
of De Martignac. In August, 1829, the king dismissed 
that ministry and appointed the Prince de Polignac, the 
embodiment of the pretensions of the old rSgime. In the 
summer of 1830 were issued the famous ordinances, which 

1. practically suppressed all opposition newspapers ; 

2. dissolved a regularly elected Chamber before it had 

met; 
3 and 4. reduced the Chamber of Deputies by one-half, 

and gave the whole electoral power to a small 

number of noble and wealthy persons ; 
5. called to the Council of State the most extreme 

Royalists. 

The response to this was the Revolution of July, and the 
last of the Bourbon kings took the road to England. 

The counterparts of Charles II. and James II. had 
come and gone, and this phase of French history in its 
main features bears almost an exact resemblance to that 
of England. But at this point the history diverges. 
The French statesmen of the time themselves regarded 
the change to the Orleans dynasty as corresponding to 
the English Revolution of 1688. Why was the result so 
different ? The French have been bitterly reproached 
because they did not take this opportunity of securing 
the blessings of constitutional government. It would be 
about as reasonable to take an English ploughman from 
the inland counties, to set him down for six months in 
the neighborhood of the British Museum, and then rail at 
him because he did not master the treasures of learning it 
contains. 

How were the new governments made ? In England 
by a body of nobles and gentry, acting upon traditions 
and precedents which had been growing up since Magna 



180 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Charta was signed by King John. In France the substi- 
tution was made by the prompt action upon the Chamber 
of Deputies of one or two statesmen in Paris, among 
whom Thiers, then a journalist, took a leading part. 
This resulted in a compromise extorted from some self- 
appointed leaders of the Paris populace, who had taken 
possession of the Hotel de Ville, the decision, which was 
wavering in the balance, having been given by Lafayette. 
Nothing could be more pitiful than the manner in which 
Louis Philippe proceeded from the Palais Royal to the 
Hotel de Ville, and gained the applause of the crowd 
by appearing on the balcony in the embrace of the gen- 
eral who had passed through so many changes at home 
and abroad. 

In England the Crown was decreed to William and 
Mary by the solemn and deliberate act of a duly elected 
convention, summoned by William at the request of the 
lords and members of the last Parliament of Charles II., 
whom he had called together ; and this action was ac- 
cepted by a nation trained to submission to established 
facts. In France nobody had ever learned to submit to 
anything except force. On the one hand, the Royalists 
were not at all enthusiastic for the change. Guizot sub- 
sequently declared that there were not fifty members of 
the Chamber of Deputies who desired the overthrow of 
the reigning house. On the other hand, all the radical and 
more violent section wished for a republic. The great 
and silent mass of the people, which desired only peace 
and order, had now, as forty years before, no leaders, no 
concert of action, no mutual confidence, and no power of 
resistance to the forces of disorder. The first years of the 
reign were therefore spent in a combat for position. 

Three men are chiefly identified with the events of the 
next eighteen years, — Casimir Perier, Thiers, and Guizot. 
The first of these was a man of whom any country might 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 181 

be proud. Of an iron will, and refusing office till it was 
forced upon him by an appeal to his patriotism, he saw 
that the first necessity of France was a strong govern- 
ment, and set himself to suppress anarchy and restore 
order, yet only by the power of the law. " It is only 
weak governments," he said, "which have recourse to 
exceptional methods. If the Chamber gives us arbitrary 
power, we will not make use of it." His first difficulty 
was with the king. One of the advantages of the English 
Revolution was that William III. was almost wholly ab- 
sorbed in Continental affairs, cared very little about the 
government of England, and was perfectly willing to 
change his ministers at the bidding of Parliament, if only 
the Parliament would have a will of its own. Louis Phi- 
lippe, on the other hand, had decided opinions and was 
reluctant to yield them. Reigning without governing 
was not at all to his taste. One of the chief faults of his 
reign was that he could not respond frankly to the popu- 
lar will, hampered those who did not agree with him, and 
obstinately supported those who did. But the imperious 
Perier compelled submission to himself as a necessity. He 
was equally peremptory with his colleagues and with sub- 
ordinate functionaries. Through all France he suppressed 
riots with a strong hand and continued to prosecute the 
rioters, though the juries almost as regularly acquitted 
them. He made large use of the press, though in this 
field the opposition papers were too strong for him. It 
was in the debates of the Chambers, which were almost in 
continuous session, that he put forth his utmost strength. 
He would tolerate nothing but direct opposition. " I do 
not care for my friends when I am right. It is when I am 
wrong that they must support me." a 

1 See Thureau-Dangin, " Monarchy of July," Vol. L, for the character 
of Perier, though this quotation is from a " Memoir of Thiers," by Charles 
de Mazade. The former author says (Vol. IV., p. 372), speaking of Lord 



182 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

By threats of resignation, he forced the various groups 
to take one side or the other, and did more to consolidate 
the Chamber into two solid parties than any French states- 
man has ever done. His power in this respect was greatly 
increased by his skilful management of foreign affairs, 
combining a resolute assertion of the national dignity with 
an equally firm maintenance of peace. Such a career, ex- 
tended over many years, might have modified the history 
of France. But the conflict was too much for his strength, 
and he died on the 16th of May, 1832. The forces of 
disorder which he had repressed again sprang into life, 
and, while the succeeding ministry was equally determined 
upon resistance, there was more of uncertainty in its com- 
bined action. The Republican insurrections in Lyons and 
Paris and the Royalist risings in la Vendee led to severe 
measures, till the disastrous attempt upon the king's life by 
Fieschi was followed, somewhat illogically, by the laws of 
September, 1835. These had reference, partly to the con- 
stitution of juries, but mainly to the press. Their avowed 
object was to suppress Legitimist and Republican papers, 
and to permit only those supporting the existing govern- 
ment. Any publication exciting to a change in the form 
of government of 1830, to destroy the order of succession 
to the throne, or urging the citizens to arm against the 
royal authority, was to be punished with imprisonment for 
a term ranging from five to twenty years, and a fine not 

Palmerston in relation to the affair of Mehemet Ali, "The most extraor- 
dinary thing in all this business is to see a group of men consent to go 
along with a man who not only inspires them with no confidence, but 
whom they believe to be politically dishonest and treacherous, and to see 
them discuss seriously with him the adoption of particular measures, with 
the certainty that he will not loyally carry them out." It is precisely 
this traditional self-control and submission when circumstances seem to 
require it, even though sometimes carried to excess, which gives to Eng- 
lish statesmen the superiority over the untrained and inexperienced men 
who think they must insist upon their own views even though it brings 
all business to a stand. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 183 

exceeding $10,000. It was forbidden, moreover, under 
lesser penalties, to assume the name of Republican, to 
criticise the king in the discussion of acts of government, 
to publish an account of political trials or of the private 
deliberations of the jury or to give their names, or to sub- 
scribe in favor of condemned newspapers. Newspapers 
were required to give security in amounts of $10,000 to 
$20,000 in cash, and editors were held responsible for 
articles unsigned. 1 

The next few years turned upon the rivalries of Thiers 
and Guizot, probably not greater than those constantly 
occurring among British ministers, but not based upon or 
restrained by strong party support. They were both, 
beyond question, patriots and honest men, but were left 
too much to the guidance of their own will and intelli- 
gence. They were not held in check by public opinion, 
because there was no public opinion. In England the 
great mass of public opinion was generally on the side of 
the ministry of the day against extremes of faction on 
either side, compelling them to use moderation, and 
rely on the force of argument. In France, in reality, 
there was to be after 1820 only two determined enemies, 
the Right and Left, seeking to destroy and not convert 
each other, each being at the mercy of the violent on its 
own side without any interposing mediator. 2 Both states- 
men were great admirers of English parliamentary govern- 
ment, and aimed to introduce it in France; but the condi- 
tions were wanting, both on the side of the Parliament 
and on the side of the king. They could attack and over- 
throw an existing ministry, but they could not set up 
another on any firmer basis. 3 Nothing was more fatal to 

1 La Rousse, Encyclopedie, article "Lois de Septembre, 1835." 

2 Thureau-Dangin, "Le parti liberal sous la Restauration," p. 102. 

8 The period of 1838 to 1848 was one of intellectual anarchy. Even 
the eighteenth century was less agitated. There were Legitimists, Ultra- 
montanes, Bonapartists, Republicans, Socialists, and Socialists of ten 



184 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the dynasty than the coalition against the ministry of 
Mole. The latter represented an attempt on the part of 
the king to get rid of ministerial dictation, and to govern 
according to his own ideas. The evil of this was that it 
brought the king himself into discussion and weakened 
his hold upon public respect. The government of M. 
Thiers, which after an interval succeeded that of Mole, 
failed because that minister was at once too much in sym- 
pathy with revolutionary ideas and too warlike, at least 
in appearance, to suit the king or the conservative mem- 
bers of the Chamber, and on the 29th of October, 1840, 
Guizot took the head of the government, to hold it for 
eight years, until the downfall of the monarchy. 

Of the memoirs of Guizot it has been pleasantly said 
that they were the autobiography of a man who never 
made a mistake. 

He began with assurance, continued with certainty, and ended with 
infallibility. ... It was very difficult for him to understand that 
universal history, or at least modern history, should not be an intro- 
duction to the government of Guizot. He belonged to the class known 
as doctrinaires, and his theory was that of the "juste milieu" avoiding 
extremes of either kind. A government of the middle class, based 
upon reason as far as the state of public opinion would admit of it, 
upon liberty in the degree which would not break with tradition, — 
this was his ideal, and he found it in the government of 1830. But 
with the ideas of a philosopher he combined the temperament of a 
trooper. He had more the attitude of combat than of government, 
less the air of a prime minister than of an opponent of the Opposition. 
Men followed him in attack rather than sustained him against assail- 

different schools ; and all were uncompromising, the Legitimists being 
absolutists, the Ultrainontanes Jesuits, the Bonapartists despotists, the 
Republicans radicals, the Socialists aiming at chimeras, and all accepting 
the most singular mixtures which disfigured without moderating them ; 
the Legitimists demanding universal suffrage, the Bonapartists appealing 
to the French Revolution, and the Republicans proposing, under the 
colors of democratic propagandism, the policy of conquest. It is more 
than intellectual anarchy ; it is cacophony, (Fmiile Faguet, "Guizot," 
Revue des Deux Mondcs, July, 1890.) And over all this chaos, there 
was wanting any consistent and established framework of government. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 185 

ants. He was just the person tp discipline the men of the centre, who 
were delighted to find their ideas carried out with such vigor. One 
weak spot there was, that, in 1838, he had quitted his party on account 
of his resentment, and, in aiding to overthrow Mole, had given to his 
group an example of indiscipline which he did not admit against him- 
self. Commanding a majority in the Chamber the first object for 
him was to maintain that majority, and Guizot set himself resolutely 
against any extension of the suffrage. By the charter of June 14, 
1814, the qualifications were, for electors, thirty years of age and direct 
taxes of 300 francs, and, for elected, forty years and direct taxes of 
1000 francs. The law of April 19, 1831, fixed the voting qualifica- 
tion at 200 francs and of eligibility at 500 francs of direct taxes. In 
1830 the electors were 99,000, in 1842 224,000, and Guizot thought 
reform had gone far enough. Only a few months before 1848, hear- 
ing a deputy exclaim that the day of universal suffrage would come, 
he exclaimed, " No ! there is no day for universal suffrage ! There is 
no day when all human creatures can be called upon to exercise 
political rights. The question is not worth turning to from that on 
which I am now employed." And yet, in resolutely resisting universal 
suffrage, Guizot did not see that it was not opposed to his views. 
French universal suffrage is as firmly pacific and conservative as Guizot 
was, and the policy of conservatism, the policy of peace at any price, 
and the policy ignorant of or hostile to chimeras, which was the policy 
of Guizot, is that of our universal suffrage, when it is left to itself and 
not deceived, as would have been the case with Guizot. But that that 
was universal suffrage, neither Guizot nor anybody else then knew or 
imagined. The universal suffrage here described was that of the 
French peasant, and every one ignored the French peasant, and knew 
only the upper middle class and the people of the cities. 1 

If Guizot, or if the king, changing his ministers in 
response to the popular will, had made a frank appeal to 
the nation, based on the peace and prosperity of France 
during his reign, it is fair to suppose that he would have 
received a response as favorable as Louis Napoleon did; 
and if, trusting to that response, he had dealt firmly yet 
temperately with the people of Paris, France might have 
been spared much of suffering and disgrace. But the 
character of the king was as little propitious as that of 
Guizot. Possessing unquestioned courage, liberality of 

1 E. Faguet, Bevue des Deux Mondes, article " Guizot," July, 1890. 



186 THE LESSON OF POPULAPw GOVERNMENT chap. 

mind, and skilful prudence, he yet wished to govern too 
much, to make his personal authority felt. He sincerely 
believed that, by his unchangeable system, by his own 
policy through all crises and public fluctuations, he had 
almost or quite alone saved the country from war and 
anarchy, and was convinced of the necessity of his royal 
power. Though he met only with respectful obedience 
in his family, his son, the Prince de Joinville, wrote to his 
brother from his ship at Spezzia : — 

I begin to be seriously frightened. The king is inflexible and will 
listen to no opinion but his own. His will must settle everything. 
There are no longer any ministers, their responsibility is nothing, 
everything goes back to the king. The king is at an age when he no 
longer accepts observations. He is accustomed to govern and likes to 
show that it is he who governs. His immense experience, his courage, 
and all his great qualities make him encounter the danger boldly, but 
none the less the danger exists. 1 

The result was that the unpopularity of the government 
recoiled upon the king. While somewhat impatient of 
the imperiousness of Guizot, Louis Philippe thoroughly 
agreed with and supported his policy. In foreign affairs 
the policy of peace was not always accompanied with the 
dignity which is so important in French eyes, while the 
affair of the Spanish marriages alienated English sympa- 
thy almost to the point of rupture. In internal affairs 
king and minister adhered to the policy of resistance, 
which meant conservatism until it meant revolution. 

It was not merely universal suffrage to which Guizot was opposed, 
but any extension of that privilege. His theory implied government 
by the middle class, and he imagined he had got it. His failure was 
in not seeing that there was not one middle class but many, that 
besides the actual rich there was a large class steadily gaining in 
wealth before he came to the multitude who had nothing. The fact 
is that the middle class, the object of the predilection of Guizot, has 
never governed France. 2 

1 Charles de Mazade, "Monsieur Thiers," p. 175. 

2 Faguet, ut supra. 



ix FIRST HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 187 

From 1815 to 1848 France was governed by an aris- 
tocracy. If, at least in the latter half of the period, it 
was an aristocracy of wealth, it was freed from the sense 
of responsibility which more or less belongs to that of 
birth and is conveyed in the phrase noblesse oblige. The 
Chamber reasoned like Guizot. "We are not an aris- 
tocracy. We are a middle class, and therefore we can- 
not make a mistake." Animated in his resistance by a 
dread " of the ideas of '91," Guizot denied the existence 
of any demand from the country for electoral reform. 
The ministry had a majority in the Chamber, which was 
all that the conditions of parliamentary government 
required, and with the firm conviction that they were 
right, they did not hesitate to resort to political methods 
of maintaining that majority in the elections. But if 
there was no direct demand from the country, there was 
a distinct current of feeling in favor of reform. 

The last time the question was put in the Chamber, a 
few months before 1848, the vote was 189 against 122, 
which, in an assembly made up almost wholly of rich 
men, containing also a number of functionaries and thor- 
oughly drilled and disciplined by an aggressive leader, 
showed a very strong minority. No effort was made to 
ascertain or to conciliate public opinion. If Guizot, or 
the king, through another ministry, had brought forward 
even a moderate measure of reform, claiming the merit 
of a concession to public opinion, and accompanying it 
with strong measures for the preservation of order, it 
might have stemmed the tide of democracy, which once 
more led France through anarchy back into the arms of 
despotism. 

Let us recur again to English experience. Suppose 
that in 1830, when the public passion was rising, King 
William IV. had set himself to govern Great Britain 
according to his honest and sincere ideas of what was 



188 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, ix 

best for the country, that he had called the Duke of 
Wellington to his aid, and that these two had persistently 
refused to modify their ideas or their system. Suppose 
that by a practice growing up through several centuries 
England had been governed from London, even in all 
details of local affairs ; that the whole island had be- 
come accustomed to wait for guidance from London in 
all political movements ; and that, partly as an effect 
and partly as a cause, the contest had not been one of 
party against party, and class against class, looking 
towards official and trusted mediators, but of group 
against group, and man against man, without any mutual 
confidence and cooperation, but on the contrary with 
widespread suspicion and distrust. Suppose that the 
press, instead of being moulded to traditional dependence 
upon a moderate and conservative public opinion, had 
been exasperated in its first stages of freedom by fine and 
imprisonment into a spirit of bitter and savage attack 
upon the whole framework of government. Suppose that 
the population of East London had had before them the 
precedent that twice within as many generations their 
predecessors had overthrown and shattered in pieces the 
whole established government of the country, leaving the 
work of reconstruction in the hands of their own self- 
constituted leaders : is it so certain that the result in 
Great Britain would have been entirely different from 
that in France? 



CHAPTER X 

FRANCE — THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 

TDERHAPS there is no event in her history which has 
-*- done more to lower France in the estimation of the 
world than the Revolution of 1848. The old monarchy- 
had a glamour and brilliancy which gave it a high place 
in the world's affairs as they then stood, but the evils and 
the injustice which it brought about furnished some ex- 
cuses for the first Revolution, even in the eyes of those 
who most bitterly condemned that event. The First Em- 
pire, though infinitely more disastrous to France than the 
Revolution, covered its sins in a blaze of military glory. 
The Revolution of 1830 had its explanation, if not justi- 
fication, in the ineptitude and the reactionary character 
of Charles X. and his surroundings. The errors and 
calamities of 1870-71 were condoned by the courage, the 
endurance, and the elasticity of the French people. But 
in 1848 France had enjoyed eighteen years of constitutional 
government. It had maintained peace abroad and in good 
measure at home, and the country had advanced greatly 
in wealth and prosperity. The king was humane, liberal, 
and well intentioned, and it seemed as if gradual reform 
might have remedied the moderate comparative disadvan- 
tages from which the country suffered. But all this was 
overturned at a blow, the country plunged into anarchy, 
civil war averted only by fierce bloodshed in Paris, and 
after a few years of hesitation and fear the nation was 
handed over to despotism almost as mean and contempti- 
ble as that of Louis XV. How these things came about, 

189 



190 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

and what light they cast upon popular government, is a 
problem worthy of much more careful study than it has 
yet received. 1 

At the end of the year 1845 the ministry of Guizot 
had lasted five years, and in spite of the attacks of the 
Opposition had firmly held its own, and with continued 
success had greatly increased its strength. The govern- 
ment had declared its intention of dissolving the Chamber 
after the session of 1846, and members were anxious to 
stand well with a ministry which would have to manage 
the elections. At this point the Left Centre, seeing it had 
nothing to hope for from the Centre itself, entered into an 
alliance with the Left, and a formal treaty was drawn up 
by Odilon Barrot and Thiers as the respective leaders. 
It was based upon electoral and parliamentary reform 
with the repression of electoral corruption as the prin- 
cipal points, and with the idea also of proposing modifica- 
tions in the laws of the jury and the press. 

The Radicals of the Chamber, without taking part in 
the treaty of alliance, showed themselves disposed to 
second the campaign which it implied. Feeling that the 
day of the Republic was still distant, and discouraged as 
to conspiracies and riots, they thought it expedient to 
identify themselves with parliamentary action. Outside of 
the Chamber all Republicans did not take this view. The 
National, indeed, the organ of M. Thiers, gave it support, 
but it could not claim to speak alone for the Republicans. 
In 1843 a stenographer of long standing, much mixed up 
with secret societies and a devotee of 1793, M. Flocon, 
had founded the Reforme. The new paper had a severe 
struggle at starting. It had not nearly as many sub- 

1 In this account of the events which led up to the Revolution of 1848 
I have followed the excellent work of M. Thureau-Dangin (" History 
of the Monarchy of July"), having consulted most of the authorities 
which he sums up. If he errs at all, it is in being too favorable to the 
government of Louis Philippe. 



x FRANCE --FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 191 

scribers as the National, which yet did not much exceed 
three thousand. It existed only by means of pecuniary 
advances by Ledru-Rollin, whom Flocon had contrived to 
reach by playing upon his vanity and ambition. The 
Reforme was strongly Jacobin, inclined to socialism, and 
regarded the pretensions of the National with a jealous 
and suspicious eye, while the managers of that journal in 
turn did not conceal their contempt for the upstarts who 
aimed to share the direction of the party. These dissen- 
sions did not fail to make themselves felt under the 
Provisional Government. 

Finding that in their attack on the government all other 
expedients failed, the new opposition bent themselves to 
develop the charges of corruption and of the exertion of 
personal influence on the part of the king. There is no 
doubt that offices and favors were used to hold the majority 
together, and that Guizot, while personally pure, did over- 
look doubtful acts on the part of others, which the public 
was disposed greatly to exaggerate, especially in view of 
the limited character of the "pays Ugal" or category of 
voters. Again, the manner in which the king laboriously 
devoted himself to public affairs, giving his days and 
even his nights, and, while anxious not to transgress con- 
stitutional limits, showed a spirit of meddlesome inter- 
ference and irritating dictation, failing to understand 
that it is sometimes wise to appear indifferent and to 
keep silent, — these things did not justify the accusation 
of the use of personal power, but they facilitated it. 

Contrary to the expectation of the government itself, 
the elections gave it a large majority, as shown in the 
Chamber by its vote for president, 223 against 98. There 
were in the Chamber no less than two hundred function- 
aries, or persons in government employ. It was almost 
wholly a representation of private interests. The very 
strength of the majority had the disadvantage that it 



192 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

made it exacting, and strengthened the king with regard 
to his own methods of government. 

Some of the conservatives, however, feeling that pledges 
of reform had been made during the campaign, raised their 
voices on behalf of it. Guizot haughtily refused consid- 
eration, going so far as to say " that those who were not 
content with the course of the government might join the 
ranks of the Opposition." Another dissident fraction was 
created under the dangerous leadership of Emile de Girar- 
din, editor of the Presse. In spite of its majority the 
session of 1846-47 ended badly for the government. 
Developments of official corruption, bad harvests through 
the country, unsatisfactory condition of the finances, de- 
feats of the ministry on minor points and changes of its 
members, had greatly altered the triumphant situation 
at the outcome of the elections. In the beginning of 
1847 there issued from the press, with a good deal of 
sound of trumpets, three works, the strongest which had 
yet appeared in defence of the spirit of 1792 and 1793. 
M. Michelet and Louis Blanc each published a first vol- 
ume of a history of the Revolution, the first the work of 
a historian excited by his campaign against the Jesuits 
and an acquired taste for popular applause ; the second 
that of a dogmatic theorist, placing all good in fraternal 
socialism and all evil in bourgeois individualism, the for- 
mer principle represented by the Jacobins, the Mountain, 
and the Committee of Public Safety, the other by the 
Constituents, the Girondists, and the Dantonists. Far 
more important was the " History of the Girondists," by 
A. de Lamartine, poet and dreamer, who undertook to be 
a statesman. 1 The work had an immense success, espe- 
cially as, instead of the instalment of a first volume, the 

1 To appreciate his position, we may suppose that at a given time the 
question of the future government of Great Britain was left to be deter- 
mined by Mr. John Ruskio or Mr. Swinburne. 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 193 

whole eight volumes appeared between the 20th of March 
and the 12th of June. Starting as a critic of the Revolu- 
tion, Lamartine was soon carried away by his imagination 
to be its glorifier, and the effect upon the country was in 
proportion. 

In the summer the dynastic opposition, so called because 
its members wished to retain the Orleanist monarchy, 
seeing that there was no chance for them in the Cham- 
ber after the elections of 1846, decided to appeal to the 
country. Richard Cobden happened to be in Paris and 
explained to them how the Corn Law agitation was con- 
ducted, by meetings, banquets, petitions, subscriptions, 
etc., and they were quite satisfied as to the constitu- 
tional correctness of their methods, though it was a very 
different thing in France. Cobden himself was far from 
approving their course, and when he found that their 
object was only an increase of two hundred thousand 
electors he was amazed that they should think of putting 
in motion such an immense machine for such a petty 
result. 

The plan was started by the Moderate and Royalist 
deputies of the Left Centre, but they had to resort for aid 
to the Central Electoral Committee of Paris, which was 
distinctly Republican, and the management of the business 
passed rapidly into the hands of the latter. 1 There was 
hardly any public interest shown, and the banquets threat- 
ened to be a failure. Strong language had to be used in 
denouncing the government to attract attention. The 
first banquet was held in Paris, July 9, 1847, with about 
twelve hundred guests of advanced opinions. It was 
more remarkable for what was not said than for what 
was, inasmuch as among all the toasts, — to the national 

1 Just as in the first Revolution it passed from the Girondists to the 
Jacobins, and as in government by a legislature it always does pass to 
the violent and extreme faction. 



194 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

sovereignty, to the Revolution of 1830, to the deputies, 
to the City of Paris, to the amelioration of the working 
classes, — none was drunk to the king. The dynastic 
opposition had yielded this point to the Republicans. 

The more the banquets were multiplied, the more the 
revolutionary element got the upper hand. The dynastic 
opposition had agreed that the toast to the king should 
be given or omitted according to the locality. In fact, it 
was always omitted, and the leading socialists came for- 
ward as speakers even when the presiding officer, as was 
generally the case, was Odilon Barrot, a pronounced mon- 
archist. Ledru-Rollin and the Reforme newspaper had 
held back at first from the banquets because they seemed 
too unimportant, but as soon as their success was assured 
began to take part in them. At Lille, on the invitation 
of Charles Delescluze, one of the leading communists of 
1871, Ledru-Rollin and Flocon were present. Odilon 
Barrot, alarmed at this, though he could not ask for a 
toast to the king, demanded one in favor of the institu- 
tions of July. The banquet committee, prompted by 
Delescluze, refused. Barrot declared that in that case 
neither he nor his friends would attend. The committee 
dispensed with them, and thus Ledru-Rollin became the 
principal speaker, denouncing the whole condition of 
society. 

From the beginning of July to the end of December the 
campaign of the banquets lasted six months, their real ac- 
tivity beginning in September. They were seventy-seven 
in number, with about seventeen thousand guests. While 
they were at first contemptible, even the conservatives 
began to see their importance, and the ministry to doubt 
whether they ought not to have been prevented. The 
promoters had succeeded, but at what cost ! They had 
been obliged to set in motion forces wholly disproportion- 
ate to the limited reform they had in view. They had 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 195 

gone on declaring that the liberty, the fortune, the honor, 
the probity of the nation had been compromised, that 
everything was corruption in the existing society and 
government. They had attacked the king, charging him 
with having broken his promises, and with seeking to es- 
tablish his own power ; and they did this, not in a parlia- 
mentary body, but all over France, before crowds who 
took them at their word. There was but one logical con- 
clusion to be drawn — that a government so disastrous and 
so corrupt should be overthrown. They had started the 
movement, and the Radicals had taken it up. 

The opening of the session was announced for the 28th 
of December, 1847. The Opposition, heated by the ban- 
quets, came in a state of great excitement and resolved to 
stop at nothing. More serious still were the distrust and 
anxiety of the great mass which plays the part of specta- 
tors in the political drama. Everything contributed to 
this distrust, the mishaps of the last session, the sufferings 
of the economic crisis, and, above all, the doubt which had 
fallen upon the morality of the existing system. 

Former ministers, peers of France, brought to judgment for selling 
their consciences or for murders, ambassadors cutting their throats 
or seized with madness, such scenes taking place within a short time 
might be represented as the signs of a failing system. 1 

De Tocqueville did not hesitate to say in the first days 
of 1848 : — 

For the first time perhaps in sixteen years, the feeling, the instinct 
of instability, the feeling which precedes revolutions, which often an- 
nounces them, which sometimes gives birth to them, exists to a very 
great degree in the country. I believe that the public manners, the 
public mind, are in a dangerous state. I believe, moreover, that the 
government has contributed in the most serious manner to aggravate 
the danger. 2 

And M. Thiers said at the same time, not in the Cham- 
ber, but in familiar conversation : — 

1 Mazade, " Life of Thiers," p. 179. 2 " Souvenirs," p. 24. 



196 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The country is marching with a gigantic pace towards a catastro- 
phe which will break either before the death of the king if he has a 
long old age, or shortly after." l 

It was remarkable that at the end of 1847 it was the 
extreme radicals who were farthest from believing in an 
approaching revolution. Many of them, holding to the 
republic in principle, thought that the only practical 
course was to sustain the monarchy. The Beforme jour- 
nal was on the point of failure for want of support. Nor 
was there any thought of the possibility of revolution 
in the ranks of the dynastic opposition. They did not 
believe in the revolution and did not want it, and only 
thought of it as a means of intimidating the immovable 
majority. Many of the conservatives thought that a new 
ministry should be called to make some concession to pub- 
lic opinion ; that the old one had lasted too long and was 
worn out by constant fighting, while the Opposition could 
rest at pleasure. 

Guizot, as far as domestic affairs were concerned, was 
willing to resign, but felt that foreign affairs required his 
presence. A deputy of the ministerial side, M. de Morny, 
afterwards famous, urged upon Guizot to make some con- 
cession to the popular will, which it would be dangerous 
to refuse. Guizot said that another ministry should be 
put in to do this. De Morny replied, ' There is nobody to 
lead. It would mean more than a defeat of the Cabinet. 
It would be the utter disorganization of the conservative 
party.' All efforts were, however, shattered against the 
will of the king. He refused to change his ministers, 
would not listen to any talk of reform, appealed to Guizot 
to stand by him, and took his stand upon the constitution- 
ality of his action. Still the majority of the majorit}^ was 
more than half convinced. It seemed as if a little pa- 
tience and moderation on the part of the Opposition would 

1 Mazade, op. cit., p. 180. 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 197 

attain the desired end by peaceful means. What was 
really wanting was the tradition of parliamentary govern- 
ment, the training in party organization, which make the 
difference of the history of England. 

On the 28th of December the two Chambers were as- 
sembled to hear the address of the king, which was read by 
Louis Philippe, then seventy-five years of age, fatigued 
and depressed, in a feeble voice. It contained this ex- 
pression, "In the midst of an agitation fomented by 
blind or hostile passions one conviction sustains and ani- 
mates me." To form some faint idea of the effect of this 
we may try to imagine what it would have been, even in 
peaceful England, if Queen Victoria, in an address de- 
livered to Parliament in person during the ministry of 
Lord Salisbury, had used such words with reference to 
the Liberals and Home Rulers. This phrase formed the 
keynote of the battle over the address in reply, which 
raged during no less than twenty sessions, until the 12th of 
February. On the 8th of February an amendment pro- 
posing the suppression of the words * blind or hostile ' was 
defeated by a vote of 228 to 185. An amendment was 
proposed by M. Sallandrouze, a rich carpet manufacturer, 
which, without detracting anything from the condemna- 
tion of the banquets, expressed the hope that the govern- 
ment would take the initiative of 'wise and moderate 
reforms,' especially of 'parliamentary reform.' A certain 
hesitation on the part of Guizot was decided by an almost 
contemptuous refusal from the king, and the minister, not 
perhaps unwillingly, while he softened this direct refusal, 
held out only the possibility of some indefinite action in 
the future. The amendment was rejected by 222 against 
189, and the address supporting the policy of the govern- 
ment as a whole was passed, 244 to 241. * 

A new stimulus had been given to the Opposition. Im 

1 Thureau-Dangin, "Monarchie de Juillet," Vol VII., pp. 387-392. 



198 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

mediately after the opening of the session the leaders of 
the Left Centre and the moderate Centre, thinking it was 
time to stop, agreed that they would have nothing more 
to do with the banquets. Certain persons thinking, on the 
other hand, that the campaign begun in the provinces 
should be concluded in Paris, it was proposed to hold two 
banquets, one in the second and the other in the twelfth 
ward. Odilon Barrot and Duvergier de Hauranne refused 
to join, and asked the promoters to give it up. Those of 
the second ward yielded, but those of the twelfth declined 
to do so. The government, by the prefect of police, re- 
fused authority and threatened to interfere. Immediately 
the Opposition turned round, supported the banquet, and 
attacked the government in the most violent manner, 
referring to Charles X. and saying that resistance would 
mean revolution. 

On the 13th of February, after the address was voted, 
a meeting of deputies of the Left and the Left Centre was 
held, with Odilon Barrot presiding. The question was 
as to holding the banquet. Marie, of the party of the 
National, objected that a banquet in the present state of 
feeling and among so excitable a population was like light- 
ing fireworks among combustibles. Among his radical 
friends he had said- 4 If we are ready for a revolution, give 
your banquet. If not, it will cause a riot, and I don't want 
that.' It was the dynastic opposition joined with the less 
timid radicals who refuted him. They did not want an 
outbreak, but thought they could encounter it, taking care 
to throw the responsibility on the government. In a 
meeting where the dynastic opposition was in an immense 
majority they voted for the banquet, 70 to 18. It can be 
said that there was no conspiracy or plan of revolution 
among the radicals. Marrast of the National said to 
Odilon Barrot and Duvergier de Hauranne, 'I dread a 
collision a hundred times more than you. It is my party 



x FRANCE— FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 199 

which would bear the responsibility.' At the same time 
the supporters of that journal did go so far as to discuss 
the Republic and whether Jerome or Louis Napoleon would 
be the most available of the Bonapartes, decided in favor 
of the latter, and notified him in London. 

On the 19th of February, both parties becoming fright- 
ened, a compromise was effected with the government, ac- 
cording to which the banqueters were to assemble and 
then be summoned by the police to disperse, and thus a 
case would be made up for the courts to decide. Every- 
thing was thus looking peaceful, when on the 20th of Febru- 
ary the Reforme, the National, and the Democratic Pacifique 
published a programme for a procession to escort the depu- 
ties, which was of far greater significance than the banquet 
itself. It summoned the population into the streets. 
Drawn up in the form of an order of police, or rather of 
battle, the programme disposes of the public streets, gives 
the order of march and the stations of each group, and 
more than all, as if deliberately to substitute revolutionary 
power for that of the government, it invites the National 
Guard to take part in uniform, if not with arms, and to 
march by regular legions with officers at their heads. It 
was Marrast, as a member of a sub-committee, who pre- 
pared this, and upon the demand of another member sub- 
mitted it to Barrot and Duvergier de Hauranne. They 
carelessly recommended a milder tone, and Marrast, left to 
himself, issued it nearly in its original shape. 

This was too much. It was a clear violation of law, 
and the government issued a proclamation accompanied by 
notices, including : 1. an order of General Jacqueminot, 
reminding the National Guards that they could not turn 
out as such without an order from their chief ; 2. a decree 
of the prefect of police formally prohibiting the banquet ; 
and 3. the ordinance with respect to public assemblies. 
The government determined to make a grand military 



200 THE LESSON UE EOF UL AH GOVERNMENT chap. 

demonstration upon the plan prepared by Marshal Gerard 
in 1840 for the case of troubles in Paris. This plan, 
assuming the combined action of the National Guard and 
the army, provides for everything, the division of zones, 
the position of each corps, their means of connection, and 
mode of combat. The Minister of War said he had 31,000 
troops at command, well supplied with food and munitions. 
It is strange to read of the entire feeling of security on the 
part of Guizot and the king, as well as of the prefect of 
police, a man of the highest character, M. Delessert, not- 
withstanding the earnest warning given to the latter by 
members of the municipal council. 1 

There has been such complete recovery from the old 
illusions as to the National Guard that it is difficult to 
imagine the ideas which prevailed on this subject in the 
first half of this century. The National Guard had come 
to consider itself not as a part of the public force in the 
hands of the authorities, but as ' the political city under 
arms,' judging the government before supporting it, and 
entitled, in case of need, to express its criticisms or its 
demands. The monarchy of 1830 in its origin had con- 
tributed not a little to exalt pretensions which were des- 
tined in the end to prove so fatal to it. The National 
Guard had repaid its flatteries at the time by furnishing 
for the repression of riots a force which in the disorganiza- 
tion succeeding a revolution could not have been found 
elsewhere. Even then it was inclined to bargain for its 
assistance, and there never was any certainty that it would 
not take the idea into its head of refusing that assistance. 
But the material danger being past and the new royalty 
getting more firmly seated, the disadvantages of the insti- 
tution alone remained, and it was the regular game of the 
Opposition to raise up embarrassment to the government 
through it. The annual review by the king became a 

1 See the account of the Revolution of 1848 bj r Maxime du Camp. 



x FRANCE— FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 201 

veritable nightmare to the ministry on account of the 
manifestations which it was feared might be brought for- 
ward. Thiers first ventured to countermand it in 1836. 
Reestablished in 1837, it was finally suspended in 1840. 
Visibly, as the government began to free itself from its 
origin, it showed more and more of coldness and distrust 
towards the National Guard. But worse than this it 
showed negligence in the choice of a commander-in-chief. 
After Lafayette was got rid of, the post had been given to 
Marshal Lobau, one of the finest veterans of the imperial 
wars. By his personal prestige, his activity, his mixture 
of firmness and of rough good nature, he had succeeded 
in keeping well in hand this insubordinate and capricious 
force. The armed citizen felt flattered by being treated 
with such familiarity by such an illustrious warrior. 
Dying in 1839, Marshal Lobau had been succeeded by 
Marshal Gerard, another military celebrity, but whose 
health obliged him to resign in 1842. Whether or not the 
material security then enjoyed had made the place to be 
regarded as a kind of honorable sinecure, the next choice 
fell upon General Jacqueminot, of recent promotion, with- 
out warlike reputation, and having reached under the Em- 
pire no higher grade than that of colonel. Apart from 
his devotion to the king, his principal title consisted in 
being father-in-law of one of the ministers, and having 
been as deputy an influential member of the majority to 
which the ministry of 1842 felt bound to assign some 
rewards. He was no longer young, and his health was 
broken, so that at the last he was hardly able to leave his 
chamber or to rise from his armchair. With excellent 
intentions, therefore, he was physically and morally unable 
to exercise upon the National Guard the personal influence 
which was with them the principal and almost the only 
weapon of command. 

On the 22d of February, as soon as trouble began, the 



202 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

opponents of the ministry had challenged them to call out 
the National Guard. The government might have replied, 
'We will not, because you have labored to make it an 
instrument of disorganization, which from its nature it is 
likely to be.' But that would have caused a scandal, and 
on the assurance of General Jacqueminot that the force 
could be relied on it was decided, at five o'clock in the 
evening, when the orders were given to occupy the city 
with armed force, at the same time to beat the call for the 
National Guard. Only a few men had responded, and those 
of doubtful disposition. On the 23d the rappel was made 
general all over the city. More men came, but the cry 
arose and the feeling spread that they should interpose 
between the government and the people and oblige the 
king to change his ministers and grant reform. Many 
who supported this idea would not for the world have con- 
tributed to overthrow the monarchy. But they foolishly 
imagined themselves engaged in a work of pacification. 
Their vanity was tickled with the importance of this part 
of arbitrators, and they were not sorry to give a lesson 
to a government accused of so many crimes at home and 
abroad. Those who thought themselves and perhaps were 
in a minority, because so many conservatives had stayed 
at home, were intimidated and silent. Now was felt the 
want of a superior command. Formerly not a trouble 
broke out in the city, not a drum-beat sounded, but one 
saw old Marshal Lobau going from one mairie to another, 
visiting all the posts, haranguing, directing, and stimulat- 
ing the National Guard. His successor could not leave his 
chamber ; nobody saw him. He was not even represented 
at the different corps by trusted officers to supervise and 
direct the execution of the general orders. As one after 
another of the legions declared against the government, 
the army which had thus far fought sadly but without 
hesitation was demoralized and shaken. In the St. Denis 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 203 

quarter a passer-by asked an officer, " Is the riot serious? " 
The officer shrugs his shoulders in sign of ignorance. 
"Ah ! " he said, " it is not the riot which I am concerned 
about." "What is it, then?" "The National Guard, 
which, if this goes on, will amuse themselves with firing at 
our backs." About the same time at the Place de l'Ode*on 
two detachments, one of soldiers of the line and the other 
of the National Guard, came together. The commandants 
salute each other. " What will you do if a crowd of peo- 
ple present themselves ? " " I shall do as you do." " But 
I shall not disperse the column. I shall let it pass." " I 
shall do as you do," repeats the line officer. " My soldiers 
will do as the National Guard does." 

Bad, however, as was the encouragement of the violent 
and the discouragement of the army, the conduct of the 
National Guard was to have an effect still more serious. 
As soon as the news of its defection reached the Tuileries 
it caused a sort of panic. The National Guard had been 
regarded as a sort of bulwark of the monarchy, and this 
was outwardly said more than it was believed. If this 
should fail, what would happen ? Officers of the Guard 
arrived declaring that they were ready to die for the 
king, but that the ministry was held in execration. If 
only the ministry was dismissed, the National Guard would 
restore order. Among the members of the court there 
were numerous opponents of the ministry. Why, they 
said, should the monarchy perish for a man ? And they 
found a powerful supporter in the queen. She had be- 
come very impatient for that which she regarded as the 
only efficient remedy. On the 15th of February she had 
requested M. de Mon tali vet, the intendant of the civil 
list, to urge it upon the king, but he having been several 
times rebuffed, begged the queen to take it upon herself. 
Unaccustomed to speak to her husband upon political 
affairs she had postponed it, but on the 23d, frightened by 



204 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the news as to the National Guard, and forgetting that a 
concession which could be made with honor to public 
opinion could not be so made to an insurrection, she ran in 
despair to the king and employed all the resources of her 
tenderness to make him share her anxiety and emotion, 
and to give up a cabinet which threatened the existence of 
the monarchy. Up to this moment Louis Philippe would 
have dismissed the queen, gently telling her she was inter- 
fering with what she did not understand. But now he 
was himself thoroughly shaken. No doubt the army 
could be relied upon, but if he kept up the struggle he 
must at any cost get rid of the National Guard and if 
necessary order it to be fired upon. By his nature and 
education he shrank from the shedding of blood, not see- 
ing that hesitation in such a crisis would cause more 
bloodshed than the most energetic resistance. There was 
still another cause of hesitation. There was a saying that 
the Charter of 1814 had been " granted " by the king, 
while that of 1830 was " granted " by the people. The 
Revolution of July gave Louis Philippe his crown by the 
action or acquiescence of the people of Paris, and the 
National Guard had given their support. How could he, 
as he afterwards said, fire upon his electors ? 

While he was in this state of mind M. Duchatel, the 
Minister of the Interior, arrived on his way to the Cham- 
bers at about two in the afternoon on the 23d. To the 
inquiry of the king he replied that the outlook was dark, 
but that with energy of resistance they should get through. 
The king assented and added "that advice came to him 
from all sides to change his Cabinet, but that he did not 
approve of it." M. Duchatel replied that he was ready 
to do as the king wished, but that concession to violence 
against lawful authorities was not a means of safety, and 
that one defeat would lead to another. " I agree," said the 
king, " that Ave must stand firm, but I want you to talk 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 205 

with the queen. She is very much frightened." The queen 
then enters in a state of much excitement. " M. Ducha- 
tel, I know the devotion of M. Guizot for the king and 
for France. If he will consult that, he will not retain 
power for another moment. He will ruin the king ! " 
After further hesitation on the king's part, M. Duchatel 
leaves for the Chamber and returns with Guizot. The 
king receives them in the presence of the queen and of 
his two sons. A short conversation ensues, and the 
ministers place their resignation in the hands of the king, 
who accepts it with expressions of regret. At a later 
time it became a matter of disagreement, whether the 
king had dismissed them or they had responded too 
hastily to his hesitation. 

M. Guizot returned to the Chamber, which was becom- 
ing more and more agitated in the absence of the minis- 
ters. Refusing answers to all questions, he announced 
that the ministry had resigned, and that the king had 
called in M. Mole to form another. Instead of fairly 
meeting the change and sending for Thiers or Barrot, 
the king had applied to Mole of the conservative party, 
and precious time was lost in finding out that he could 
not form a ministry, and that his name did not appease 
the popular discontent. 

Meantime the great city was left almost wholly to 
itself, with a populace growing more and more excited, 
a National Guard divided, but in the main hostile to the 
government, and regular troops left without any definite 
command or orders. About half-past nine in the even- 
ing of the 23d, a crowd proceeding through the street 
with torches came upon a detachment of the fourteenth 
of the line in the Boulevard des Capucines. The lieu- 
tenant-colonel pleads his orders and courteously refuses 
passage. A mass of spectators assembles on the sidewalks, 
speculating as to which side will have its way. Suddenly 



200 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

a shot is fired, then one or two more, and then the sol- 
diers, having received no orders, deliver a volley. The 
crowd takes to flight with cries of fear and horror, and — 
a strange sign of the condition of affairs — the soldiers, in 
spite of their officers, also take to flight, and a troop of 
dragoons, which was behind them, makes off in the direc- 
tion of the Madeleine, leaving the street vacant, except 
for some fifty persons dead and wounded in pools of 
blood. By degrees soldiers arid people return, and the 
lieutenant-colonel sends a messenger expressing the deep 
regret of the troops for this 'terrible mistake.' The 
people of course would not listen, but seizing a passing 
wagon they place sixteen corpses upon it, and with work- 
men mounted upon the sides and holding torches it is 
paraded through the streets of the city till two in the 
morning, with cries of c Vengeance ! They are murder- 
ing the people ! ' And the people respond, descending 
into the streets in a cold rain, building barricades, break- 
ing into armorers' shops and preparing for the next day's 
battle. 

About midnight the king was officially informed that 
Mole could not succeed in forming a ministry, and he 
was obliged to send for Thiers. But it was not till half- 
past two in the morning that the latter reached the 
Tuileries, and then time was spent in discussing whom 
the king would accept as ministers, and whether the 
Chamber should be dissolved. At four o'clock, the king 
having finally yielded, Thiers departed on his mission of 
forming a government. Meantime, about an hour before 
Thiers arrived, Marshal Bugeaud had responded to a 
summons from the king to take command of the army. 
He was an old African soldier of vigor and experience, 
but with a reputation for severity, and unpopular in the 
city. He at once set about military occupation of the 
city upon the plan of Marshal Gerard. One column ad- 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 207 

vanced successfully through the barricades, reaching the 
Hotel de Ville at five o'clock in the morning, with slight 
loss. Another column in its advance encountered a bar- 
ricade in the Rue St. Denis. This would easily have 
been forced, but some National Guards and citizens ap- 
proached General Bedeau, announced the appointment 
of a new ministry under Thiers and Barrot, declared that 
order would soon be restored, and begged him to await 
further orders. The general, an excellent officer though 
of a temporizing character, consented to wait while one 
of the citizens could carry out the proposal of procuring 
instructions from Marshal Bugeaud. It is significant of 
the state of confusion and uncertainty in all minds, that 
even the marshal allowed himself to be persuaded by this 
volunteer citizen, and sent orders to General Bedeau to 
suspend the attack and to withdraw his column to the 
Tuileries. The general, in despair, saw that an orderly 
retreat was impossible. The way was blocked with bar- 
ricades, the soldiers were obliged to break ranks, the 
people mingled and fraternized with them, even taking 
the cartridges from the boxes at their sides and rifling 
the caissons of a battery of artillery which occupied the 
way. Much the same thing happened with the other 
columns which were withdrawn. 

About eight o'clock in the morning Thiers, having 
fulfilled his mission, returned to the Tuileries with 
Odilon Barrot and other men, of whom he wished to 
compose the Cabinet. The king accepted the details, 
and it was agreed that Barrot and some others should 
go into the streets to calm the people, Thiers being held 
back by Marshal Bugeaud, who had received a warning 
that it was dangerous for the former to appear among 
the crowd. Action was too late, however, as the city 
was now in the possession of the populace. 

It seems to be clear that the uprising had no common 



208 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

purpose and no chief. Each band acted separately ac- 
cording to the fancy of those who composed it. The 
political leaders, as much surprised as anybody at the 
course of events, did not direct it. One of the future 
members of the provisional government, — M. Marie, — 
passing by the office of the National about ten o'clock, 
found great excitement, but vague and undefined. i No 
plan,' he said, ' was put forward, no resolution adopted. 
The suddenness of the movement took everybody by 
surprise.' An hour later he met the editor-in-chief of 
the Reforme — M. Flocon — at the foot of the grand 
staircase of the Chamber of Deputies, chatting quietly 
with one of his friends. ' He had,' says M. Marie, 
'neither the air nor the attitude of a man who is 
carrying out in his mind a work of revolution.' And 
M. Marie adds : ; That which is certain for me is that 
the revolution led the people of Paris and was not led 
by them, at least up to eleven o'clock.' 

Without superior direction, however, the crowd, by 
a sort of instinct, marched upon three points — the Tui- 
leries, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Hotel de Ville. 
One part, swarming over the palace, compelled the king, 
who had previously abdicated, to take to flight with his 
family, ultimately reaching England. 

About noon the deputies had assembled in considera- 
ble numbers at the Palais Bourbon. The members of 
the old majority had felt themselves conquered with 
the fall of Guizot. The test showed how little solid- 
ity and resistance there was in this conservatism based 
almost wholly upon material interests. There was seen 
hardly a trace of those convictions and that fidel- 
ity which strengthen themselves against ill fortune, 
ready for every devotion and every sacrifice. Every 
moment brought new tidings of disaster to diminish 
courage — first the abdication and then the flight of the 



x FRANCE— FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 209 

king. 1 M. Thureau-Dangin here adds a remark which 
reaches to the profoundest depths of popular govern- 
ment : " Besides, an assembly can only act upon condi- 
tion of being led, and none of those whom the Chamber 
was accustomed to follow were present. The members 
of the former Cabinet had been obliged to provide for 
their safety, and as for the new ministry, nobody knew 
where they were or even who they were." We shall 
have by and by to examine the conduct of assemblies 
which have never been led at all. 

A little before one o'clock Thiers makes his appear- 
ance, and the deputies crowd around him, but he only 
increases the panic. He confirms the report of the de- 
parture of the king, knows nothing of the Duchess of 
Orleans, fears it is too late to save the regency, declares 
that the troops will not prevent the people from passing, 
and that the Chamber will soon be invaded. Then, wav- 
ing his hat in an attitude of despair, and crying, "The 
tide is rising, rising, rising," he takes his leave, retires 
by a long circuit, so as to avoid encountering the people, 
to his house in the Place St. George, and is no more seen. 

About one o'clock the president, M. Sauzet, decides 
to open the session in advance of the regular hour. But 
there were no ministers present. Barrot, who seemed 
as little disposed as Thiers to appear in the Chamber, 
remained at the Ministry of the Interior under the domi- 
nation of the radicals, who had acquired control of him 
in the campaign of the banquets. But if the government 

1 Troubled visions seeking in what direction fortune lies so as to follow 
it : apprehensions of adhering to a lost cause : prudence wishing to provide 
for all contingencies : treacheries watching one another : habits contracted 
in the incessant shocks of our civil struggles of confounding success with 
right, egotism with wisdom, knavery with skill ; these are the elements 
which made up towards the end of the reign of Louis Philippe public 
opinion legally constituted in the Chamber of Deputies. — Daniel Stern 
(Comtesse d'Agoult), " History of the Revolution of 1848," Vol. I., p. 270. 



210 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

did not appear, its place was supplied by the advocates 
of the Republic sent from the National. Up to noon 
the staff of that paper had only talked of the abdication 
of the king. Emboldened by the weakness of executive 
power, they decided that the monarchy must come to 
an end and be replaced by a republic, made up a list 
of a provisional government, and sent two delegates to 
announce to the Assembly this " decree of the people," 
the people being the coterie of a newspaper with three 
thousand subscribers. 

At half-past one the Duchess of Orleans appeared in 
the Chamber with her two sons, followed by several 
officers and National Guards. The Assembly greets her 
almost unanimously with cries in favor of her son and 
herself as regent. Meantime the delegates from the 
National arrived, and the crowd of the populace began 
gradually to fill the hall. It is curious to note that 
General Ruhlieres, a vigorous veteran of the imperial 
wars, and General Bedeau, one of the best of the Afri- 
cans, with several thousand soldiers at their orders, were 
unable to guard against the invasion of some hundreds 
of insurgents the legislative enclosure which the Duke 
de Nemours had charged them to protect, and in which 
they knew that the Duchess of Orleans was playing the 
last card of the monarchy. 1 The fact was that after it 
had been made to give way before the insurrection 
through orders to avoid all collision, the army no longer 
existed. 

The struggle was short. Lamartine ascended the trib- 
une and, after an opening which seemed to favor the 

1 When the delegates from the Hotel de Ville passed the Place de la 
Concorde, General Bedeau commanded a body of troops in good order. 
He besought the delegates to procure some orders for him, as he did not 
know what to do. Some deputies came to ask him to protect the Chamber. 
He said he could not act without an order from the presiding officer. — 
Daniel Stern, op. cit., p. 276. 



x FRANCE — FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 211 

regency, declared for the Republic, and said that a list 
of names for a provisional government would be read. 1 
The Duchess of Orleans remained to plead the cause of 
her son till the hall was filled with the crowd and the 
president had been expelled from his chair, after having 
declared the session ended. The Guards sent notice that 
they could not insure her safety, and she then departed, 
to follow the royal family shortly after. 

What took place at the Hotel de Ville, the third objec- 
tive point of the crowd, is connected with the history of 
the provisional government. 

In distributing the blame for the events which have 
been recounted, M. Thureau-Dangin says that the capital 
fault was beyond question in changing the ministry dur- 
ing the full insurrection. The order to cease the armed 
struggle, the weaknesses of the generals and the demoral- 
ization of the soldier, the absence of all government, were 
the logical result of this fatal mistake. On the other 
side, the chief blame must rest with the dynastic opposi- 
tion which sought only to overthrow the ministry, regard- 
less of consequences, and with the National Guard, which 
through sheer folly encouraged the insurrection and dis- 
couraged the defence ; the Opposition preparing the revo- 
lution, and the National Guard making it, though neither 
of them foresaw or desired it. 



1 At the moment when the majority of deputies, accepting — in spite of 
the opposition of Marie, Cremieux, La Rochejaquelin — the regency of the 
Duchess of Orleans, was preparing to proclaim the royalty of the Count 
of Paris, Ledru-Rollin, who had followed in the street all the phases of 
the struggle, runs to the Chamber to prevent at all hazards this monarchist 
conclusion. Thanks to his athletic strength he occupies the tribune around 
which a veritable combat was taking place, remains master of it, takes up 
the proposition of a provisional government started before his arrival, then 
allows Lamartine to develope it, till at length the popular flood which 
M. Marc Caussidiere had promised half an hour before to let loose upon 
the Assembly, swamps and disperses it. — Vapereau, " Dictionnaire des 
Contemporains." 



212 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

M. Charles de Mazade observes : — 

The ministry [of Guizot] failed, not because it wanted courage or 
because the danger was greater than at other times, as in 1832 and 
1834 when formidable insurrections were encountered, but because in 
the face of a less danger it had less confidence in itself, in its "major- 
ity," in public opinion, or in the National Guard. When it faltered 
before a riot on the 23d of February, that riot became on the 24th the 
fall of a throne. It perished for faults and errors of conduct which 
had nothing irreparable and especially were not worth a revolution. 
It did not fall like the previous monarchy for violating the law, but 
with the law, and it survived in its beneficent work. 1 

The failure of Louis Philippe's reign cannot be charged 
to universal suffrage or to popular government, because 
neither of those had yet existed in France. The govern- 
ment was aristocratic just as truly, though in a different 
sense, as in England before 1830. The agitation for an 
extension of the suffrage was on precisely the same prin- 
ciple in both countries. Cobden underestimated the 
importance of the object in France, because there were 
in the world for him only two things of importance, — the 
repeal of the corn laws and the gospel of peace. But if 
the opinions and the wants of the great masses of the 
people were to find any expression or to receive any 
attention, it must be by means of a wider basis of rep- 
resentation. The methods of bringing this about, as 
expounded by the great expert, Richard Cobden, were 
identically the same in both countries. Nor can it be 
said that the effect was greatly different. The exaspera- 
tion of the people against the government and the readi- 
ness to proceed to extreme measures were probably as 
great, and were certainly much more widely spread, in 
Great Britain in 1830 than in France in 1848. Outside 
of Paris the population of France took very little inter- 
est, as was shown by the violence and the indefiniteness 
of the language to which it was found necessary to resort, 
1 Thiers, pp. 181-184. 



x TRANCE— FALL OF THE MONARCHY OF JULY 213 

and the character of the agitators into whose hands the 
conduct of the business fell. The main difference in the 
two cases was that in England the king and the aristoc- 
racy yielded in time, while in France they did not, and 
this again was mainly owing to the fact that in England 
the terms offered were definite and the consequences of 
refusal were clearly perceived. All over the country 
even the great masses of ignorant people understood 
that a particular law as to members of Parliament was 
the object to be aimed at, and they clamored for that 
law. They understood also that to get that law a par- 
ticular ministry must be placed in power, and they de- 
manded that ministry. How these things would relieve 
their sufferings and give them food, they did not under- 
stand at all ; but they believed it because a class of men 
whom they were accustomed to rely upon and look up to 
told them so. On the other hand, there was no such 
class in France. Those who should have composed it 
had not been drawn to each other and to the people 
during two centuries by a common resistance to royal 
power, nor had they thus learned the necessity of organ- 
ized, drilled, and disciplined parties, and of selecting lead- 
ers and submitting to them. On the contrary, through 
the predominance of the royal power, exercised by means 
of taxation, the army, and the Church, they had been 
wholly disintegrated as a class, had been divorced from 
and lost all training in political affairs, had been imbued 
with jealousy and suspicion of each other, and with equal 
ignorance of and contempt for the great mass who did 
not share their accident of birth. They had then been 
expelled from the country by a great uprising of the 
people, whom they had regarded as brute cattle. They 
had afterwards returned under conditions involving equal 
separation among themselves and from the people. It is 
said that the Revolution of 1848 showed that parliamentary 



214 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, x 

government was unsuited to the French people. In fact, 
it only showed that they had no training for that kind of 
government. Neither king, ministers, nor Parliament had 
learned to respond to the will of the nation, and the nation 
had not learned to form or express any will of its own. 

Yet if we compare the government of these eighteen 
years with that from 1789 to 1793, the progress was rela- 
tively equal to anything which has taken place in Great 
Britain in an equal space of time. The king and the 
ministers had learned that they must govern according 
to the will of the majority of the Chambers, and the 
Chambers had learned that the real source of authority 
was in the electors. The nation as a whole was quite 
willing to submit to any authority which was able to 
secure peace and protection. The experiment came so 
near to success that it offered every encouragement for 
the future. What was to be the lesson of the next half- 
century ? 



CHAPTER XI 

FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 

ET us suppose that in Great Britain, at the height 
-*— * of the movement for parliamentary reform before 
1832, the populace of East London had been persuaded 
by agitators that they were really the people of the king- 
dom, entitled to have their wishes regarded, and that it 
depended only on themselves to equalize their condition 
with that of the West End ; that on a certain day they 
had moved westward in a mass of from twenty to one 
hundred thousand men, more or less armed; that the 
police and even the household troops had given way 
before them, had broken ranks, mingled and fraternized 
with the crowd, and had allowed the latter to take posses- 
sion of their arms and ammunition ; that the officers of 
these troops, in the absence of orders and not knowing 
what authority to look to, had lost all control of their 
men ; that the upper classes, torn with jealousy and 
mutual distrust, were paralyzed with fear and uncer- 
tainty ; that news came that the king and the royal fam- 
ily had fled to France ; that Buckingham and St. James's 
palaces stood open to all comers; that the crowd had 
overflowed Westminster Hall, had mingled with the mem- 
bers of Parliament in session, had expelled the Speaker 
from his chair, placed one of their number in it, and 
proceeded then and there to constitute a new government 
for the country. Does anybody believe that the London 
would have behaved any better than the Paris mob ? In 
fact, the accounts of the time teem with instances of 

215 



216 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the gentleness, forbearance, and magnanimity of the 
Parisians. 

What was the tendency and underlying principle of 
the new revolution? De Tocqueville, in his " Souvenirs," 
quotes from a memorandum which he prepared for his 
party friends in 1847 : — 

The Revolution of 1789, which abolished all privileges and de- 
stroyed all exclusive rights, left one, — that of property. As long as 
this formed only the origin and basis of other rights it was defended 
without difficulty, or rather it was not attacked. But now that the 
right of property appears only as a last remnant of a destroyed world 
of aristocracy ; when it stands alone, an isolated privilege in a levelled 
society ; when it is no longer covered behind many other rights more 
disputed and more hated, — it is not the same thing. It is compelled 
now to sustain every day the direct and incessant shock of democratic 
opinions. 

Does any one believe that it is by chance, by the effect of a passing 
caprice of the human mind, that we see appearing on all sides those 
singular doctrines which bear various names, but which all have for 
their principal character the negation of the right of property, which 
all tend to limit, to diminish, to enervate its exercise? (pp. 13-15.) 

This sets forth clearly the side of attack, but not that 
of defence. The whole character of subsequent events 
shows that this was not the view of the country ; that the 
peasantry are distinctly on the side of property ; that so- 
cialism and communism are the ideas of the poorer classes 
in the cities. The history of France since 1848, excepting 
a part of the Second Empire, is of a constant effort of the 
country to overcome the domination of Paris ; while even 
in Paris itself there is a minority on the side of property 
quite powerful enough to protect itself if only it has ade- 
quate organization. If it is true that the right of private 
property is the very basis of civilization, it is also true 
that the possessors of property, who can live for a greater 
or less time without labor, have an enormous advantage 
over the multitude who cannot, and they need only to work 
together to assert their will within reasonable limits. The 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 217 

history of Great Britain has taught the upper and middle 
classes, both as classes and among themselves, to work 
together. The history of France has taught them exactly 
the reverse. 

Speaking later of the revolution itself, De Tocqueville 
says : — 

Two things struck me above all. The first was the character, I 
will not say principally, but solely and exclusively popular, of the 
revolution which had just been accomplished; the omnipotence which 
it had given to the people, properly so called, — that is, the classes 
which work with their hands, — over all others. The second was the 
very small amount of the passion of hatred, and, to speak truly, of 
strong passions of any kind, which was shown in the first moments 
by the lower populace thus suddenly become the masters of Paris. 
Although the working classes had often played the principal part in 
the events of the First Republic, they had never been the guides and 
sole masters of the state, either in fact or in right. The Convention 
did not, perhaps, contain a single man of the people. It was filled 
with bourgeoisie and men of letters. The war between the Mountain 
and the Gironde was conducted on both sides by members of the 
bourgeoisie, and the triumph of the first never caused the power to fall 
into the hands of the people alone. The revolution of July was 
made by the people, but the middle class had excited, conducted, and 
gathered the principal fruits of it. The revolution of February, on 
the contrary, seemed to be made entirely outside of the bourgeoisie, and 
against it. 1 

This statement only emphasizes the enormous change 
which had come over the character of the people in little 
more than half a century. It shows how quickly the 
atmosphere of liberty, tempestuous as it was, had raised 
that character which the foulness of the old despotism 
had steadily dragged downward. 

In this critical state of things, and while the provisional government 
was issuing one decree after another for providing food for the people 
and protecting Paris, the city remained tranquil. Patrols of volunteers 
circulated through the streets. Sentinels in rags guarded the rich, 
trembling for their lives and property. During the long space of time 
from the fall of the monarchy to the establishment of the republican 

1 " Souvenirs," p. 102. 



218 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

power not one act of violence against persons was committed; no 
private property was even threatened. The populace, excited as it 
was, seemed to be lifted out of itself by the idea of free government. 1 

Four months later, indeed, in the month of June, the 
people fought desperately, for reasons to be presently 
noticed, the most remarkable thing about it being the 
heroism and bravery with which they gave their lives for 
ideas, which, though wholly mistaken and incompatible 
with the existence of society, were neither mean nor un- 
natural. It is to be observed that the conflict of June 
completely suppressed this rule of the people of Paris, and 
gave full power to a national assembly elected for the first 
time in France by organized universal suffrage. 

The National Assembly came together on the 4th of May. At that 
moment there were in Paris one hundred thousand workmen armed, 
organized in regiments, without work, dying of hunger, but with their 
minds stuffed with vain theories and chimerical hopes. Society was 
cut into two parts, — those who possessed nothing united in a common 
covetousness, those who possessed anything in a common anxiety. 
The strongest characteristic of the Assembly was the want of mutual 
confidence. They did not know what they wanted. There were more 
great proprietors and more nobles than in the chambers elected under 
a high pecuniary qualification. 2 

De Tocqueville says that, taken as a whole, the As- 
sembly ranked higher and contained more men sincere, 
disinterested, honest, and, above all, courageous, than any 
of the chambers of deputies which he had seen. 3 By 
investing General Cavaignac with military power during 
the days of June, the Assembly triumphed in the fullest 
measure, and by the surrender of power by that general 
it obtained full control of the government. It failed, 
just as all legislatures, of whatever nationality, always 
fail when they attempt to govern without the guidance 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 336. 

2 De Tocqueville. "Souvenirs," Part II., p. 147. 
* Ibid., p. 158. 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 219 

of strong executive power, though the resulting disaster 
may be more or less under differing circumstances. 

In like manner the Legislative Assembly came together 
on the 29th of May, 1849. The new elections gave a 
majority of more than two-thirds to those who, however 
much they might disagree in other things, wished to 
arrest or throw back the revolution. Yet they were in 
a state of panic almost equal to that which followed the 
February revolution. The conservatives were frightened 
because their triumph was less complete than they ex- 
pected, while the men of the Mountain — 100 in num- 
ber — were elated for exactly the opposite reason. That 
the latter achieved so much De Tocqueville thinks was 
largely owing to the intolerance of the conservatives 
towards those who, though they did not agree with 
them, had helped them to oppose the Mountain. It 
appears, then, that universal suffrage freely gave power 
to the conservative and upper classes ; and that these 
failed almost as badly as the people, from the want of 
all habits or traditions of self-control, of mutual conces- 
sion, or of moral submission to leaders. 

Let us hear next the conclusion of one of the modern 
generation of Englishmen who are honestly trying to 
understand the meaning of recent French history. 

But if the country was not Republican neither was it devoted to 
the fallen king. There were many adherents of a Constitutional 
Monarchy, but none of the system of Louis Philippe ; the provinces 
had been surprised by the Revolution, but it cannot be said that they 
were disgusted; they were simply unprepared; and in this unpre- 
paredness they would probably accept the Republic, not with conviction 
or with loyalty, but merely as a temporary expedient till some more 
desirable establishment could be attained. But it was not so the 
Republicans conceived the Republic ; to them it meant not merely a 
form but a spirit; it was to issue like a new Athene from the head 
of the god. Humanity, armed for the succor of the oppressed, inspired 
for the guidance of the free ; it was to be the symbol of fraternity, the 
pledge of equality, the guarantee of liberty ; it was to purify every 



220 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

passion, to solve every problem, and to realize in a moment of time 
the ultimate human ideal. A Republic, so conceived, was not merely 
a change of government, it was a reconstruction of society; and any 
attempt to achieve it must involve the active, intelligent, and enthusi- 
astic cooperation of every talent and every class in every district in 
France. Such was the ideal ; what now were the facts ? A complex 
and defective social organization, imperfectly understood and unre- 
servedly condemned; in Paris a Provisional Government appointed 
at the dictation of a mob in order to create the Republic; in the 
provinces uncertainty and confusion, contempt for the fallen authori- 
ties, mistrust of the new ones, ignorance of economic conditions, and 
a blind fear of schemes of reform ; on the one hand a minority of 
idealists, insatiable in their demands, unlimited in their faith, unprac- 
tical in their proposals; on the other a complex mass of conflicting 
interests and ideas, unprepared for decisive action, unintelligent of 
the new issues, unaware of a common aim, but ready to unite in defi- 
ance of principle under the stress of a single negative passion — the 
terror of anarchy. 1 

In other words, to prevent a violent and fanatical 
minority from leading away the multitude, it was neces- 
sary that the other minority, much larger and more 
powerful, who favored order, conservatism, and modera- 
tion, should have possessed definiteness of purpose, mut- 
ual confidence, and concert of action, — things which 
the history of France, up to that time at least, had 
rendered wholly impossible. 

On the 24th of February, 1848, all government had 
ceased in France. The royal family had fled. The 
Chamber of Deputies, overpowered by the mob and upon 
the proposition of Lamartine, had rejected the regency 
of the Duchess of Orleans. The crowd had expelled 
the president, M. Sauzet, from his seat, and the dep- 
uties had left the hall. The reins of power were ready 
for the first hand that could lay hold of them. In 1830, 
with almost precisely the same circumstances, a candi- 
date stood ready in Louis Philippe. By the prompt ac- 

1 "Revolution and Reaction in Modern France," G. L. Dickinson, 
1892, p. 172. 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 221 

tion of a few men and the support of General Lafayette, 
the moment was seized, and the machinery of government 
was set in motion again before the disorderly element had 
time to get the upper hand. In 1848 the throne had lost 
its prestige, and there was no available candidate. The 
only definite demand was for a republic and a provisional 
government as the means of establishing it. Some young 
men address themselves to the aged Dupont (de l'Eure) 
and invite him to take the president's chair, to which he 
is conducted amid the applause of the crowd. Lists of 
members of a proposed provisional government had been 
prepared in the offices of the National and Reforme news- 
papers, and the president read aloud one which was a 
compromise between the two. Some of the names having 
been objected to by the crowd, Ledru-Rollin asked and 
obtained a moment's attention. He proposed that the 
names should be read one by one, and that the 4 people ' 
should say 4 yes' or 'no,' while those which were ap- 
proved should be announced to the country by the official 
reporters of the Moniteur. The crowd accepted with ac- 
clamation the names of Dupont (de l'Eure), F. Arago, 
Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin. 

Protests greeted those of Garnier-Pages, Cremieux, and 
Marie, and Ledru-Rollin calls for a show of hands as to 
the first name. But the clamor and confusion are so great 
that he declares the meeting dissolved, in order that the 
provisional government 'just named' may attend to its 
work and take measures to prevent the effusion of blood. 
The cry arises for adjournment to the Hotel de Ville, and 
the Chamber is soon left almost empty. 

The scene at the Hotel de Ville almost surpasses imagina- 
tion. Every hall filled with a motley crowd, each with 
its separate orator, proposing names for a government. 
Gradually the members of the list read in the Chamber 
came together in one of the offices and prepared to de- 



222 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

liberate. But a new complication arises. Louis Blanc, 
who had himself submitted a list for the acclamations of 
that section of the people which surrounded the Hotel de 
Ville, appeared and demanded that to the previous list 
should be added the names of himself, Marrast, Flocon, 
and, as he said, upon the spontaneous demand of the 
people, that of a workman named Albert. The other 
members were disposed to resist, but the conflict was 
averted by the reluctant consent of the newcomers to 
accept the title of 4 secretaries,' though they acted as full 
members from the beginning. 

Who were these eleven men, who thus assumed the 
responsibility of governing a great nation with a city like 
Paris in the centre, and with international complications 
on every side? Grouped somewhat in the order of con- 
servatism and practical ideas of government they stand as 
follows : — 

Dupont (de l'Eure) was born in 1767, and therefore at 
this time eighty-one years of age. He had been an ad- 
vocate in the old parliament of Normandy, a member of 
Napoleon's Council of Five Hundred, president in 1801 of 
the criminal tribunal of Evreux, where he was distinguished 
for his independence and impartiality in the administra- 
tion of justice, a deputy of the department of the Eure in 
the Corps Legislatif of 1813, member and vice-president 
of the Chamber of 1814-15. He represented the de- 
partment of the Eure from 1817 till 1818, acted with the 
Opposition throughout the Restoration, took part in the 
events of 1830, and held the portfolio of justice in the first 
cabinet of Louis Philippe. He was, however, too liberal 
in his views, again joined the Opposition, and was one of 
the most active promoters of the campaign of the ban- 
quets. Perhaps the most prominent and respected re- 
publican personality. 

Francois Arago, then sixty-two years of age, was a man 



xi FRANCE— THE REVOLUTION OE 1848 223 

of science of the highest distinction and character. He 
had served in the Paris Municipal Council, in the Cham- 
ber of Deputies from 1830 to 1848, and was also active in 
the Opposition under Louis Philippe. 

Alphonse de Lamartine, poet, dreamer, and man of 
letters, was then fifty-seven years old. After a sojourn 
of some length in the East, he was elected to the Chamber 
of Deputies in 1833, continuing there till 1848. With an 
almost boundless vanity he was the chief of a party which 
consisted of himself alone, ready to support the govern- 
ment in crises, but reverting to the critic as soon as the 
danger was past. His eloquence charmed the Chamber, 
but never convinced it. With his imagination cap- 
tivated by the Republic, he was largely instrumental in 
rejecting the regency of the Duchess of Orleans. As a 
member of the provisional government he showed the 
most superb courage, facing an armed and howling mob 
during the afternoon of February 25th and subduing it by 
the sheer force of his oratory. At one time he enjoyed 
immense popularity, but he was no statesman, as, indeed, 
statesmanship would have been of very little avail in 
stemming the tide which swept him along. 

Cremieux was a Jewish lawyer, devoted through life to 
his religion, fifty-two years of age, who came to Paris in 
1830, and distinguished himself in the defence of political 
criminals. Elected to the Chamber in 1846, he continued 
in opposition till the revolution. After the king's flight 
he endeavored to procure the regency of the Duchess of 
Orleans. As a member of the provisional government he 
exerted himself to support Lamartine in controlling and 
calming the popular passions. 

Garnier-Pages, born at Marseilles in 1803, became at 
twenty-seven years of age a commercial broker in the 
Paris Bourse, working hard to support his brother who 
had achieved some reputation in public life. After his 



224 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

brother's death in 1841 he was elected a deputy, sold his 
business in 1845, and devoted himself to politics as a 
member of opposition and to the discussion of economical 
questions. Fluent and well intentioned, he was of very 
moderate capacity, and was always compared disadvanta- 
geously with his deceased brother. 

Marrast, born at St. Gaudens in 1801 in very narrow 
circumstances, began life as a teacher at the age of sixteen. 
Having passed through the various grades, 1827 found 
him a master in the higher normal school in Paris, from 
which position he was expelled for a speech at the funeral 
of the popular idol Manuel. Afterwards he became chief 
editor of the Tribune and still later of the National, in 
which capacity, having never been in public life, he 
became a member of the provisional government. His 
disposition was perhaps more conservative than that of 
Lamar tine. 

Marie, born at Auxerre in 1795, was admitted to prac- 
tice as a lawyer in Paris in 1819, and in 1830 had begun 
to make his reputation, like Cremieux, in political trials ; 
studious and honest in his profession, but as a statesman 
weak and incapable. He was elected a deputy in 1842, 
and took a prominent part in opposition. On the 24th 
of February he was the first to mount the tribune and 
oppose a regency, making a demand for a provisional 
government. It was he who organized the national work- 
shops, less, however, with the idea of relieving labor than 
of opposing the socialist schemes of Louis Blanc. Early 
in June, when receiving a delegation of workmen, he 
denounced the workshops with severity, and instead of 
calming popular passion, did much to bring on insurrection. 

Ledru-Rollin was the son of a physician, and born in 
Paris in 1807. He began his career as a lawyer in 1830. 
Elected deputy in 1839, he was prosecuted by the govern- 
ment for language held to the electors, and condemned to 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 225 

four months of prison and three thousand francs' fine ; but 
the sentence was cancelled for technical defects. He 
became the popular orator of the Left on account of the 
vigor of his denunciations. As a member of the pro- 
visional government he tried fairly well to support the 
conservative element, rejecting the idea of his own dictator- 
ship and aiding in the control of popular passion. His 
greatest defect was indecision between the two sides. 

Louis Blanc, born in Madrid in 1812, supported himself 
in Paris at the age of nineteen by teaching mathematics. 
Afterwards taking to journalism he became and remained 
the apostle and type of organized socialism, not relying 
upon revolution, but upon peaceful even if fallacious 
theories of cooperation and state assistance. He had 
taken no part in public life up to 1848. 

Flocon, born in 1800, pursued journalism as a profes- 
sion, varied by conspiracy against the government. In 
1843 he became editor of the Beforme, which was his only 
claim to membership in the provisional government. An 
active supporter for solid reasons of Ledru-Rollin and in 
a less degree of Louis Blanc, he showed in official position 
industry and probity if not statesmanship. 

Albert, whose real name was Alexandre Martin, was 
born at Bury in 1815, the son of a peasant who had him 
educated as a mechanic. At the time of the revolution 
he was at work in the factory of a button-maker. A sup- 
porter of Louis Blanc, he seems to have borne himself with 
modesty and dignity. Arrested as a participator in the 
movement of May 15, he remained in prison till 1859. 

Of all these men it should be said that no one was ever 
charged with pecuniary corruption in office. 

It is evident that with executive power in the hands of 
a group like this, efficient government was impossible 
under the best circumstances, and the circumstances made 
it almost impossible in any hands. It is true that their 

Q 



226 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

position was strengthened by acceptance on all sides. On 
the very night of its installation the Provisional Govern- 
ment received by the mouth of the marshals and the most 
distinguished generals the homage of the army. That of 
the National Guard followed. On the report of the tele- 
graph the departments were to pass at once from the 
monarchy to the republic. The members of the govern- 
ment undoubtedly tried to do the best they could, but 
apart from the evil of multiple executive power the new 
government suffered from the vice of its origin. It had 
no traditional or dynastic claim. It did not represent any 
national opinion, had no class or constituency to appeal 
to for support. It was in effect self-nominated and ap- 
proved by the Paris mob. It must to a great extent obey 
its masters. In the first place a government based upon the 
will of the ' people ' could not suppress or limit any mode 
of expression of popular opinion. The organizers of the 
banquets, the publishers of the National and the Reforme, 
were obliged by political necessity to recognize the absolute 
liberty of the press and of association. The provisional 
government did this by repealing the laws of September, 
1835, by abolishing the stamp tax on periodicals and the 
security fund of the papers, and by allowing clubs of all 
kinds to be opened in Paris and in all the cities of 
France. 

There were two sections of the government, representing 
two policies, embodied in a general way in Lamartine and 
Louis Blanc. The former proposed as the aim of the new 
government, 4 charity among the different classes of the 
citizens, to be realized by all such institutions of assist- 
ance, association, benevolence, as are compatible with the 
liberty of capital and the security of property.' These 
last words show that Lamartine, while he hoped the Repub- 
lic might discover a solution of the economical problem, 
was determined to have nothing to do with the proposals 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 227 

of the socialists, and in this he was supported by the 
majority of the members. But the workingmen, who had 
fought on the barricades and supplied the material force 
of the revolution, had acted in the expectation that with 
the government would fall the tyranny of capital ; to 
them the Republic was socialist or nothing, and they were 
not to be comforted by general hopes of a gradual and 
tentative amelioration ; they believed in the possibility of 
a social transformation, radical and instantaneous, and this 
they were determined to exact from the men whom they 
had delegated to authority. 

There were two men in the provisional government who 
shared this view. Blanc, supported by Albert, in his aim 
to ' enfranchise the people by endeavoring to abolish this 
double slavery, ignorance and misery,' wished to replace 
private by public property, and this he hoped to achieve 
by means of cooperative productive associations, feder- 
ated together so as gradually to oust the competition of 
private producers, and started, in the first instance, by 
loans advanced by the State. Such was the most definite 
expression of the socialism of 1848 ; but the word had 
been used to include much more than this ; it had been 
identified passionately and vaguely with revolution and 
robbery ; secret societies and revolutionary clubs had 
urged and were urging its propaganda ; it had come to be 
regarded, not as a rational scheme of economic reform, 
but as a conspiracy to dissolve society in a general scram- 
ble for property. Under this general condemnation fell 
the project of Louis Blanc. The provisional government 
was divided into Socialists and anti-Socialists, and before it 
had been in existence a day was irreconcilably at variance 
with itself. 1 

Almost from the moment of its installation, and for 
sixty hours at a stretch, the provisional government was 

1 " Revolution and Reaction in Modern France," pp. 177-179. 



228 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

besieged in the Hotel de Ville. The besiegers might be 
regarded as allies, but allies on condition of being obeyed. 
Miscellaneously armed with muskets, swords, pikes, bay- 
onets, and the like, they filled the square in front of the 
building, broke down the railings, forced the gates, and 
thronged every hall and passage till they reached the room 
where the government sat ; without thundered the chorus 
of the Marseillaise, within was the clash of steel, the deto- 
nation of aimless discharges, windows shattering, wood- 
work crashing, altercations, threats, and fragments of 
song ; and, in the midst of this confusion, backed by the 
argument of force, arrived a deputation to demand the 
recognition of the right to labor {droit au travail). While 
Lamartine was arguing with them, Louis Blanc had al- 
ready drawn up a decree which was submitted to his 
colleagues, signed in haste, and issued on the spot. It 
ran as follows : — 

The Provisional Government of the French Republic engages to 
guarantee work to all citizens. It recognizes that the workmen ought 
to form associations in order to enjoy the legitimate reward of their 
labor. It restores to the workmen, to whom the money belongs, the 
million which will be due on the civil list. 1 

This decree was practically extorted by force from the 
government : it promised much more than was ever guar- 
anteed by such socialism as Louis Blanc's, and, a fortiori, 
much more than a government could extemporize into 
performance. 2 

In execution of this decree, a vote was passed, February 
27, ordering the establishment of national workshops for 
thirteen thousand men. M. Emile Thomas, charged with 
organizing them, did it in military fashion. Eleven men 
formed a squad, with a chief elected by themselves. Five 
squads formed a brigade, besides a brigadier who was 
elected by a direct vote of the brigade, making 56 
1 Op. cit., p. 181. *Ibid. 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 229 

men. Four brigades made a lieutenancy of 225 men in- 
cluding the lieutenant. Four lieutenancies formed a 
company, making, with their chief, 901 men. The com- 
panies were united by threes, with a chef de service com- 
manding, 2703 men. Finally, a chef d' arrondissement 
commanded the whole of his ward. The eighth arron- 
dissement, which had alone furnished twenty thousand 
men, counted eight chefs de service. The pay was fixed 
as follows : — 

At work. Not at work. 

Brigadiers per day . . .3 francs 3 francs 

Section chiefs per day . .2.50 " 1.50 " 

Workmen per day . 2 " 1 " 

The rush was so great that a check had to be made to 
admissions. Men poured in from the country, and private 
employers complained that they could get no help. The 
list of admissions was : — 

From March 9 to 15 . . 6,100 

From March 16 to 31 . . . . . . . . 23,250 

From April 1 to 15 36,520 

From April 16 to 30 . . . . . . . 34,530 

From May 1 to 15 13,610 

From May 16 to 31 3,100 

From Jane 1 to 15 1,200 

118,310 

These workshops soon became an overwhelming burden 
on the treasury already prostrated by the crisis. The 
pay amounted to 300,000 francs a day at a time when the 
government had not the means of meeting ordinary ad- 
ministration. The credits opened between March 20 
and June 24 amounted to 24,000,000 francs. Instead 
of giving these men honorable work, they were turned 
into the Champ de Mars with pickaxes and wheelbarrows 
to level the terraces formerly raised on the day of the 
Federation. The workmen felt themselves degraded by 
such a mockery of work, and left it to talk politics in the 



230 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

wineshops. It was evident that something must be done. 
Leon Faucher, Wolosowski, and Michel Chevalier tried 
reform in vain. As the month of June advanced, how- 
ever, the question took the simplest possible form. The 
government determined to break up the national work- 
shops, and the national workshops determined not to be 
broken up. The chiefs of brigade were assembled, and 
informed that squads of workmen would be sent to the 
provinces to execute works of breaking up land ; that pri- 
vate employers could requisition workmen at their pleasure ; 
that all workmen from eighteen to twenty-five years would 
be incorporated in the army ; and that all payment would 
be suppressed for workmen who could not prove a resi- 
dence of six months in Paris. And because the director, 
M. Emile Thomas, resolutely refused to subject the work- 
men to these stern conditions, he was privately arrested 
on ministerial order and hurried off to Bordeaux. The 
response to these things was the insurrection of June. 
At the session of July 4, General Cavaignac announced to 
the Assembly the dissolution of the workshops, and it was 
decided that families without work should receive aid, 
under the supervision of the maires of the different sec- 
tions. It was the right to assistance replacing the right 
to labor. 1 

This account gives but one instance, though perhaps 
the strongest, of the difficulties which beset the provisional 
government on every side. We have next to consider 
what steps were taken to put the government on a perma- 
nent basis. When the Constituent Assembly came together 
on the 4th of May, one of its first steps was to replace the 
Provisional Government by an executive commission, pre- 
ceding this by a formal recognition of the services, the 
merits, and the sacrifices of the retiring body. The new 

1 Grande Encyclopedic, article "Ateliers Nationaux " ; Maxirue du 
Camp, " Revolution of 1818," p. 232. 



XI 



FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 231 



commission consisted of Messrs. Arago, Marie, Garnier- 
Pages, Lamartine, and Ledru-Rollin. The radical element 
was thus eliminated, and space left for the spirit of reaction 
which precipitated the events of June. The commission 
on the constitution consisted of eighteen members, who 
were to be chosen at random from its own body by an 
assembly wholly without guides or leaders, and whose 
members were for the most part strangers to each other. 
De Tocqueville was elected on the first ballot, receiving 
496 votes ; but it required several days and many repeated 
ballo tings to complete the number. 

In considering the commission as a whole it was easy to see 
that it would be hopeless to expect remarkable work. Among its 
members some had passed their lives in directing or controlling 
administration under the last government. They had never seen 
or studied or understood anything but the monarchy. Indeed, they 
had applied rather than studied the principles of that. They had 
hardly raised themselves above practical affairs. Charged now with 
realizing theories which they had always misunderstood or opposed 
and which had obtained their submission but not their conviction, 
it was very difficult for them to bring to their work other than 
monarchical ideas ; or if they entered at all into republican ideas, 
they had to do it sometimes with timidity and sometimes with 
impetuosity, but always by a sort of chance, like novices. 

As for the Republicans, properly so called, who were upon the 
commission, they had few ideas of any kind, unless it was those 
which they had conceived in reading newspapers or writing for 
them, for several were journalists. Marrast had directed the National 
for ten years. Domes was then its editor-in-chief. Vaulabelle, a 
serious character, but coarse and even cynical, wrote habitually for 
the same paper. He was justly astonished to find himself a month 
later Minister of Public Works and Education. All this bore little 
resemblance to the men, so sure of their object and so well informed 
as to the means of obtaining it, who under the presidency of 
Washington drew up the Constitution of the United States. 

But if the commission had been capable of good work, the want 
of time and the preoccupation as to that which was passing outside 
would have prevented it. There is no nation which is less attached 
to those who govern it than the French, nor which knows less how 
to do without government. As soon as it sees itself obliged to go 
alone it experiences a sort of vertigo which makes it believe every 



232 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

instant that it is going to tumble into an abyss. 1 At the moment 
of which I speak it desired with a sort of frenzy that the work of 
the constitution should be accomplished, and that the public power 
should have a base, if not solid, at least permanent and regular. 
What it wanted was less a good constitution than a constitution of 
some kind. The Assembly showed this eagerness and did not cease 
to spur us, of which in fact we had very little need. The remem- 
brance of the 15th of May, the apprehension of the days of June, and 
the sight of the divided, enervated, and incapable government which 
directed affairs, were sufficient to urge us on. But that which it 
must be confessed deprived the commission of all presence of mind 
was the fear of outside events and the impulse of the moment. It 
is difficult to imagine what an effect was produced by this pressure 
of revolutionary ideas even upon the minds least disposed to adopt 
them, and how it forced even those to go almost unconsciously further 
than they wished. 2 

The Convention began its deliberations on the 22d of 
May and finished them on the 19th day of June, thus 
doing in four weeks, and under such circumstances, that 
to which our Constitutional Convention devoted four 
months in the quiet city of Philadelphia. 

The decision in favor of a single chamber, though 
contrary to all experience of parliamentary government, 
is not one which can be condemned without question in 
the abstract. 

The only part of our work which was treated with superiority and 
regulated with wisdom was that which related to justice. On this 
ground the commission was at home, most of its members having 
been or still being lawyers. Thanks to them we were able to save the 
principle of the permanence of judges. That held firm, as in 1830, 
against the current that carried away everything else. 8 

The most crucial question was that of executive power. All were 
agreed in confiding it to a single man. But what prerogatives and 

1 How should it be otherwise, when for nearly three centuries the 
government has never allowed the nation to take any independent 
action ? 

2 De Tocqueville, op. cit. } p. 262. 

8 Ibid., p. 281. While the Constitution of the United States pre- 
served the same principle, if we consider that all but one or two states of 
the Union have adopted one of the worst of political evils, an elective 
judiciary, we may be more sparing in our condemnation of the French. 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 233 

what agents to give him, what responsibility to put upon him ? In a 
country without monarchical traditions in which the executive power 
has always been weak there is nothing wiser than to charge the nation 
with choosing a representative. A president who should not have the 
strength which he derives from this origin would be the puppet of 
assemblies, but the conditions among us were quite different. We 
had come from a monarchy, and the habits of the Republicans them- 
selves were still monarchical. Centralization, besides, was enough to 
render our situation wholly exceptional ; according to its principles 
the whole administration of the country, in the smallest as well as 
the greatest affairs, could only belong to the president ; the thousands 
of functionaries who hold the whole country in their hands would 
depend upon him alone. This was the case even after the Revolution 
of February, for we had preserved the spirit of the monarchy while 
losing the taste for it. Under such conditions how could a president 
elected by the people be other than a pretender for the crown ? * 

A short time only was needed to justify this reasoning, 
but it is more than doubtful whether the election of a 
president by the Assembly, which is much worse in prin- 
ciple, would have had any better result. We shall have 
occasion later to consider the effect of that method. The 
same arguments may be applied to the electorate. The 
electoral law, established by the Provisional Government 
for the creation of the Constituent Assembly, gave the 
vote to every Frenchman twenty-one years of age who had 
resided six months in the place of election, and made all 
Frenchmen eligible who had reached twenty-five years, 
giving to the elected deputies a payment of twenty-five 
francs per day. The jump from two hundred thousand 
electors to nearly eight millions, the first instance in 
French history of the application of direct universal 
suffrage, was tremendous, and resulted in the Empire, but 
it is not at all sure that at that time the same result might 
not have followed from the limited electorate of Louis 
Philippe's reign. 

1 Ibid., pp. 273-275. Louis Blanc, in his " History of the Revolution 
of 1848," also says that it was a mistake to make the president elective 
by the people instead of the Assembly. 



234 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Beaumont proposed that the president should not be reeligible. I 
supported it strongly, and the proposition passed. We both fell on 
this occasion into a great error, which will have, I believe, very evil 
consequences. We had always been much struck with the danger to 
public liberty and morality which would be caused by a reeligible 
president, who should employ in advance to promote his reelection, 
as could not fail to happen, the immense means of constraint or cor- 
ruption which our laws and our manners accord to the head of execu- 
tive power. Our minds were not supple and prompt enough to turn 
round in time and perceive that from the moment when it had been 
decided that it would be the citizens themselves who would directly 
choose the president, the evil, such as it was, was irremediable, and 
that it would be only increasing it to undertake rashly to restrict the 
people in their choice. 1 

That the result of this reasoning followed at once is 
not, perhaps, conclusive, but it accords with many other 
arguments to prove the worse than futility of what is 
sometimes advocated as a safeguard in this country. 

It is not necessary to follow the immense difficulties, in 
such a revolution, of public finance, of foreign affairs, and 
of internal administration for the whole country. The 
key to the situation was in Paris. It is noteworthy that 
the first serious attempt to dictate to the government 
came from the prosperous classes. On the 27th of Feb- 
ruary the provisional government had decreed that every 
adult Frenchman should form a part of the National 
Guard. On the 14th of March it had ordered the dissolu- 
tion of the companies which were made up of the richer 
classes, and that a new election of officers should take 
place by universal suffrage. While perfectly regular in 
form, it was the most revolutionary decree in substance 
which had yet appeared, being nothing less than a legal 
arming of the proletariat and its organized preponderance 
in an institution of which the original object had been to 
hold it in check. About the same time Ledru-Rollin, as 
Minister of the Interior, issued a circular to his agents 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 279. 



xi FRANCE— THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 235 

throughout the country, investing them with full revolu- 
tionary authority. These things aroused the upper class 
of citizens, and they determined to make a formal mani- 
festation. On the 16th of March two legions turned out 
under their officers and marched to the Hotel de Ville. 

They were met by a crowd assembled to defend the 
government, and an armed collision was narrowly avoided. 
When their delegates appeared in the Council Chamber 
they were severely lectured by Arago for setting such a 
bad example, and for stirring up hostility between the 
working classes and the National Guard. They retired in 
confusion, and the legions which had assembled soon after 
dispersed. The seed was, however, sown. The agitators 
and leaders of the clubs, seeing their opportunity, deter- 
mined to have a counter manifestation on the next day, 
ostensibly as a rebuke to the aristocrats of the National 
Guard, but really to compel the government to put off the 
elections to the National Assembly and to remove the army 
from Paris. They meant thereby to test how far the mob 
could be relied on to follow the men of violence. In the 
afternoon of the 17th of March a procession was formed, 
headed by five or six hundred members of clubs, who were 
followed by workmen, formed according to trades with 
their respective banners. The multitude filled the Place 
de Greve, while delegates proceeded to an interview with 
the government in the Hotel de Ville. Its members 
stood well together, and, in the argument which followed, 
so far succeeded in gaining over the delegates of the work- 
men, that those of the clubs did not venture to proceed to 
extremities. The members then appeared on the balco- 
nies and were received by the crowd, which did not even 
know the result of the interview, with loud applause, the 
members regarded as most revolutionary, however, receiv- 
ing the largest share. After a speech from Louis Blanc the 
crowd, estimated at one hundred thousand persons, peace- 



236 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

fully dispersed. The conspirators had failed, and the 
danger was past for the moment, but it is easy to imagine 
the alarm of the whole city at this evidence of the weakness 
of the government and of the power which organization 
and discipline were giving to the working classes. 

The next crisis came on the 16th of April. The events 
in Paris appear to have caused uneasiness in the country, 
and the reports came that the elections for the National 
Guard in the provinces and for the National Assembly 
were likely to turn in favor of the conservative and 
richer element. The revolutionary leaders, therefore, 
determined to organize a new manifestation to demand 
of the government a postponement of the elections, and 
with the further purpose of deposing the actual govern- 
ment and substituting a smaller number of the more 
radical members, and even of placing a dictatorship in 
the hands of Ledru-Rollin, whose influence, and that of 
Louis Blanc, had been greatly increased by the 17th of 
March. The division in the government, therefore, had 
reached the point of hostile preparation. Between two 
and three o'clock on the 16th, an immense crowd of 
workmen started on its march to the Hotel de Ville. 
They were met on the Quai du Louvre by two legions 
of the National Guard, who surrounded them, and sepa- 
rating them into groups escorted them to their destina- 
tion. The delegates were coldly received by officials of 
the government, and in spite of the appeals of Louis Blanc 
for a free passage of the procession the National Guards 
kept it in separate groups till it had finally dispersed. 
This victory was, however, followed by increasing de- 
mands of the richer class for arrests and prosecutions, 
thus embittering the spirit of conflict. 

The same evening of these events Louis Blanc and his 
adherents determined to repair this check by assuming 
the offensive. Though the revolutionary party was 



xi FRANCE— THE REVOLUTION OE 1848 237 

unable to prevent the meeting of the Assembly, it was 
resolved not to be ruled by it. In the clubs increasing 
declamation maintained that the people, meaning thereby 
the populace of Paris, was always above its representa- 
tives. Every day crowds filled the streets and squares 
and occupied the approaches to the Assembly. The pre- 
text for the 15th of May was the cause of Poland. The 
Assembly was in regular session, and an orator in the 
tribune was making a droning speech upon Poland, 
when a cry arose from the outside so terrible that De 
Tocqueville says he could not have imagined it to pro- 
ceed from human voices. 1 One of the officers of the 
Assembly, mounting the tribune and pushing the orator 
aside, announced that the general of the National Guard, 
contrary to orders, had directed his men not to oppose 
the crowd. Soon after it began to swarm in. Amid 
intolerable heat and dust the deputies maintained their 
seats. Barb£s, making his way to the tribune, demanded 
the immediate despatch of an army to Poland, an impost 
of 1200,000,000 upon the rich, the removal of the troops 
from Paris, and a prohibition to sound the drum-call of 
the National Guard; failing which the Assembly would 
be declared traitors to the country. 

If he could have commanded silence enough to enforce 
a vote, the situation of the Assembly would have been 
dangerous. It was saved by the inextinguishable clamor 
and confusion. After this had lasted for a considerable 
time, a drum was heard sounding the well-known pas 
de charge. A body of some forty of the young gardes 
mobiles came cleaving the crowd like a wedge, followed 
by a column of the National Guard. As they hurled the 

1 1 regret that considerations of space prevent the quotation of the 
whole of De Tocqueville's vivid account of that eventful day. Merely 
as a word-picture by an eye-witness it is well worth the attention of the 
student of modern French history. 



238 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chxp. 

five or six orators from the tribune a panic seized the 
crowd, and they escaped by the doors and windows. 
The Assembly shortly afterwards resumed its session 
and proceeded with orders for arrest and prosecution. 

The steady march of anarchy and the conflict of classes 
was brought to a crisis by the closing of the workshops. 
In those days of June the insurgents fought as men fight 
only for ideas, and when they have never been accustomed 
to see them prevail in any other way. With regard to 
that conflict only one passage from De Tocqueville is 
essential for the present purpose. 

By all the roads which the insurgents did not control there entered 
at that time thousands of men hastening from all parts of France to 
our assistance. Thanks to the railroads, some of them came already 
from a distance of fifty leagues, although the combat had only begun 
the evening before. Some came from a hundred and two hundred 
leagues on the morrow and the days following. These men belonged 
without distinction to all classes of society. There were among them 
many peasants, many bourgeois, many great proprietors and nobles, 
all mingled and confounded in the same ranks. They were armed in 
an irregular and insufficient manner, but they rushed into Paris with 
unequalled ardor : a spectacle as strange and as new in our revolu- 
tionary annals as that offered by the insurrection itself. It was 
evident from that time that we should finally triumph, because the 
insurgents did not receive fresh troops while we had as reserve the 
whole of France. 1 

Universal suffrage had begun to do its work. The 
country was brought together in a common purpose to 
defend the government which all had helped to create. 
How far this spirit, under proper guidance, might have 
led to a better future it is impossible to say. That future 
was hidden under the ghastly pall of the Second Empire, 
to end in another and still fiercer battle with the Paris 
Commune before the country could again establish its 
will. 

The victory of June had been won through the sur- 

1 "Souvenirs," p. 235. 



xi FRANCE — THE REVOLUTION OE 1848 239 

render of power both by the Assembly and the executive 
commission to the military dictatorship of General Ca- 
vaignac, the Minister of War. After the insurrection had 
been suppressed, his friend Jules Bastide, Minister of 
Foreign Affairs and a man of the highest character, sought 
the general at his house and found him seated alone with 
his mother, and bowed with grief at the terrible work which 
he had been compelled to perform. He had done his duty 
heroically, and saved France from calamities like those of 
1870, but his victory filled him with horror. Knowing that 
France was at his feet, Bastide besought him to assume a 
temporary dictatorship, and give France permanent re- 
publican institutions. " My dear friend," said the general, 
" if I did what you demand, I should authorize in future 
any ambitious adventurer to stir up a riot and to get 
power intrusted to him to repress it, and then to keep this 
power indefinitely under the pretext of public safety. I 
will give such a pretext to nobody." 

There were no visible elements for the construction of 
a new society to which an honest man could appeal. It 
was left to a second Bonaparte to organize chaos by force 
and corruption for his own selfish purposes. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SECOND EMPIRE 

npHE three years following June, 1848, are not of much 
-*- import in the constitutional history of France. The 
weak beginnings of popular government were overwhelmed 
by contending forces too powerful for resistance. 

The Republic of 1848, like that of 1793, was the attempt of a 
small minority to force its creed upon France, and the result in both 
cases was anarchy, passing by reaction into despotism. The Demo- 
crats and Socialists of 1848, like the Jacobins of 1793, did not hesitate 
to attempt to coerce the nation in the name of the Republic. The 
commissioners of Ledru-Rollin were the Democratic representatives 
of those of the Convention, and May 15 and June 13, 1848, were 
correspondent to June 2, 1793. The measures and the issue were dif- 
ferent, but the principle was the same ; it was that which was formu- 
lated by the Democrats themselves — the Republic is above universal 
suffrage. But the opposition which met the modern Jacobins was 
very different from that which had been faced by their predecessors. 
The Royalists of the Second Republic were not gathered in arms 
on the frontier backed by the forces of Austria. They sat in the 
Chamber of Deputies and formed the majority there, a majority, 
however, which was split into three irreconcilable parties, impotent, 
therefore, for positive measures and powerful only for negation. The 
result was anarchy none the less real that it was concealed under 
constitutional forms. Every one was waiting to destroy the Republic 
which every one had sworn to defend. The Republic which had 
been founded by violence, violence was bound to destroy, and Feb- 
ruary 24 already contained the germ of December 2. 1 

The three factions, Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bona- 
partists, were equally eager to establish their supremacy 
at the cost of the Republic. It was evident to all that 

1 "Revolution and Reaction in France," p. 218. 
240 



chap, xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 241 

the Bonapartists led by Louis Napoleon held the strongest 
hand, but the others hoped to use him for their own pur- 
poses. Such men as Thiers and Mole did not hesitate to 
intrigue with him, trusting to make him their instrument. 
He proved to be more than a match for them. 

When I think that at the moment when I write these lines, that is 
to say only two years after the epoch of which I speak, the greater 
part of these very men are pouring out their indignation upon the 
people for violating the constitution in doing for Louis Napoleon that 
which they were at that very time proposing to the people to do for 
themselves, I think it is difficult to point to a more notable example 
of the versatility of men and the variety of the large words of patri- 
otism and right with which small passions cover themselves. 1 

Yet it was not because these men were Frenchmen or 
because of the rule of the multitude. It was because the 
government for two hundred years had sown only violence, 
treachery, and mutual distrust ; because the old monar- 
chical system contained no elements of reconstruction. 
There was nothing possible under the circumstances but 
to sweep it away and begin again. 2 

What was the nature of the force which was to gain the 
upper hand? Legouve says that one of his relatives 
remembered seeing Napoleon in 1813 going to the Cham- 
ber in state dress in an open carriage to demand a new 
levy of men. He was hooted by the crowd. In 1815, 
while the people and the army remained faithful to 
Napoleon the upper and liberal classes cursed him as a 
scourge and detested him as a despot. In May, 1821, 
grief was spread over all France, many families putting on 
mourning. Napoleon had died at St. Helena. St. Helena 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 347. 

2 When a nation wishes to break with her past, to abandon her tradi- 
tional customs and her fundamental laws in order to embark upon the 
road to reform and thus to create for herself new institutions, this is 
assuredly not the work of a day. — De Maupas, "Story of the Coup 
d'Etat," Chap. I. 



242 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

did about as much for him as Marengo or Austerlitz, — 
changed him from a despot into a martyr and his enemies 
into executioners. It was at St. Helena that he became 
Prometheus on his rock, Christ at Calvary, Joan of Arc 
upon her funeral pile. Under the Bourbons came the 
absurd mixture of Bonapartism and Liberalism. The Bour- 
bons entered France with the foreigner and the white flag 
representing national defeat and the old regime. The 
liberals opposed to them Napoleon, promulgator of the 
Code Civil, conqueror of Europe, and defender of equality. 
Napoleon may be said to have headed the Revolution of 
July, and when Louis Philippe came in Napoleon came 
with him under the guise of the tricolor, emblem of 
imperial glory. In 1832 the Duke of Reichstadt died at 
Vienna, and the death of the son renewed the mourning for 
the father. In 1836 Louis Napoleon made his attempt at 
Strasburg. The emperor had an heir ! On the 21st of 
August, 1840, Thiers as Minister of the Interior asked the 
Chamber for a million to transfer the remains of the 
emperor to Paris. The Prince de Joinville went in a 
frigate to St. Helena, and on the 10th of December a 
procession took place, in which the remnant of the old 
army joined its glory with the splendors of the new in 
escorting the remains through the Arch of Triumph and 
an immense crowd uttering passionate acclamations. At 
the Invalides all the constituted authorities, the army, the 
Parliament, the magistracy, the Universitj^ and the Acad- 
emies in full costume bowed before the coffin. 1 

The popular imagination had converted the most arbi- 
trary and selfish of despots into the champion not merely 
of equality, which he certainly was, desiring like an 
Eastern sultan that all men should be reduced to a dead 
level under his rule, but of constitutional liberty. And 
never was a delusion more cunningly played upon. The 

1 Legouv£, " Napoleon depuis sa Mort," Revue Bleue, May 27, 1893. 



THE SECOND EMPIRE 



243 



attempts and conspiracies of the new Napoleon in the reign 
of Louis Philippe showed how completely regardless the 
former was of anything but his own selfish schemes. But 
as the crisis approached, whether of his own motion or the 
shrewdness of his advisers, be became more wary. 

From the time of February 24th the most clear-sighted Bonapartists 
fully understood that the country was determined to have the Republic, 
and that the only chance was to watch and take advantage of its 
faults and later of those of the Assembly. They no longer talked 
of an emperor, but of a popular chief of the Republic ; no longer of the 
hereditary right of Louis Bonaparte to the throne, but of the duties 
which his name implied towards the people. They exalted his chival- 
rous loyalty and his antique probity. They said that for twenty years 
he had been the hope of France. They declared that he alone could 
found a democracy without anarchy, and tried to bring over to this 
idea the Republicans who were dissatisfied with the government. 1 

The address to the nation which was published in his 
name as a candidate for the presidency was a model of 
skilful promises and professions. 2 

The presidential election on the 10th of December, 1848, 
was an event the like of which Europe had never yet seen. 



The votes polled were 








7,317,344 


Louis Napoleon had 








5,434,226 


General Cavaignac 


. 






1,448,107 


Ledru-Rollin 


. 






370,119 


Raspail 


. 






36,920 


General Changarnier 


. 






4,790 


Scattering . 








23,182 



If we except the plebiscites of the first Napoleon, which 
in the then existing condition of France and of Europe 

1 Daniel Stern, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 314. 

2 When he resolved to become a pretender to the imperial throne he of 
course had to see how it was possible — how it was possible in the midst 
of this century — that the coarse Bonapartist yoke of 1804 could be made 
to sit kindly upon the neck of France ; and France being a European 
nation, and the yoke being in substance such a yoke as Tartars make for 
Chinese, it followed that the accommodating of one to the other could 
only be effected by guile. — Kinglake, "War in the Crimea," Vol. I., 
Chap. XIV. 



244 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

were little more than the marshalling of his troops by a 
military despot, this was the first time that any European 
ruler could assert that he held his position by the dis- 
tinctly expressed will of the majority of the nation. On 
the other hand, it was the first time that any nation had 
attempted to form or express any common will. It 
showed, first, that the French people, like every other, 
desires first of all internal order and peace, and therefore 
the first and necessary condition, strong executive power. 
It showed, again, that the united will of a people can 
only be effectively exerted through a man. The people 
do not sufficiently understand measures or policies to be 
excited by them. A word, such as republic, may call 
out their enthusiasm, but what constitutes a republic, or 
how it is to be organized, is beyond their knowledge, and 
the name becomes a mere tool in the hands of fanatics or 
selfish schemers. The people must follow some known 
guide or leader, the only choice being between the good 
and the bad. The election showed further the importance 
and the true function of a legislature in informing the 
people as to the man who asks for their confidence. In 
England there would have been a group of statesmen, 
well known to the people, who would have pleaded the 
cause of Bonaparte or of Cavaignac. In France there 
was nobody whom the people could look up to, and they 
had to take such motives as were before them in the 
glamour of Napoleon and the First Empire and the 
specious promises of his successor. 

Of course, with the centralized system of France, the new president 
at once adopted the means of strengthening himself. The prefectures, 
the administration of justice, the most important as well as subordinate 
situations under government were occupied by men devoted to Gen- 
eral Cavaignac and to the ideas which the former chief of the executive 
represented. Apart from the prejudice which the Prince himself 
suffered from this state of things, it produced serious inconveniences 
from a more general point of view. To the departments, to the com- 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 245 

munes, above all to such of their inhabitants as take a share however 
small or large in the management of local affairs, the benefit of a 
change of regime in accordance with their sympathies becomes only- 
appreciable on the day when the neighboring depositaries of public 
power are in harmony of feeling with them and consequently with 
the government. The Republicans, the makers of revolutions, take 
good care to put this doctrine in practice. They have unfalteringly 
and always applied it, they have cashiered prefects, sub-prefects, 
secretaries-general, councillors of prefectures, those magistrates that 
were removable, mayors, deputy-mayors; they have not even held 
their hand at the modest rural constable. 

The Prince was therefore within justice and within his right in 
claiming from his ministers functionaries who were devoted to his 
policy, who should not prove themselves the persistent adversaries of 
his friends in the departments, and who would not beforehand and 
clandestinely endeavor to foil his eventual reelection to the chief 
magistracy of the country, when constitutionally he might become 
reeligible. In a few weeks, a goodly number of prefects and function- 
aries of all kinds were cashiered or shifted, and the choice of their 
successors was calculated to obliterate the sufferings which had been 
endured. 1 

An event occurred soon after his election which greatly 
strengthened the position of the President. The revolu- 
tion in France, which stirred all Europe, had produced 
one in Rome, resulting in the establishment of a republic 
and the flight of Pius IX. A French army was de- 
spatched under General Oudinot to suppress the republic 
and restore the temporal power of the Pope. The Presi- 
dent wrote a letter to General Oudinot congratulating 
him on his success and complimenting the army. This 
Italian question was made by the radicals the occasion of a 
movement, as that of Poland was on May 15, 1848. On 
the 13th of June, 1849, a large procession was formed 
and marched to overawe the Assembly. But under the 
energetic direction of General Changarnier the crowd was 

1 De Maupas, op. cit., Chap. VI. The line of argument is quite familiar 
to us in the defence of the spoils system of office in this country. It is 
well known how efficient this machinery was in the establishment and the 
maintenance of the Second Empire. 



246 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

dispersed by force, and the leaders of the insurrectionary 
government, which as usual had attempted to establish 
itself, took to flight. The dread of events like those of 
1848 in Paris and the prompt repression greatly added to 
the influence of Louis Napoleon throughout the country. 
Thirty-one deputies, who had been arrested for their con- 
nection with the affair, were condemned, and an election 
to fill their places was fixed for the 10th of March, 1850. 
The choice for Paris fell upon members of the extreme 
revolutionary party, and a new feeling of panic spread 
through the city. 

The years 1850 and 1851 were passed in a game of 
intrigue between all the factions in the Assembly, Le- 
gitimists, Orleanists, moderate and radical Republicans, 
and Bonapartists, while above all loomed the ominous fact 
that the constitution forbade the reelection of the Presi- 
dent in 1852. In the month of April took place the 
debate on the revision of the constitution, chiefly, of 
course, with reference to this fact. In the debate the 
hostility to and dread of the President made itself ap- 
parent and increased the bitterness on both sides. Three- 
fourths of the total vote were necessary for revision. 

The division gave this result : — 

Total number of votes 724 

Constitutional majority of three-fourths . . . 543 

For the adoption of revision 446 

Against . . .278 

It was a declaration of war, and the only remaining 
question was which should win in the struggle. On the 
side of the Assembly was General Chan gamier, who had 
turned against the President. Louis Blanc thinks that if 
Changarnier had given an order to the troops to arrest 
Louis Napoleon they would have obeyed it just as readily 
as the reverse. Whether it was the doubt as to this 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 247 

which produced delay, at any rate the opportunity was 
lost. 1 

It is an interesting though perhaps profitless specula- 
tion to consider the possible alternatives to the famous 
coup <T£tat. Suppose that the constitution had allowed 
the reelection of Louis Napoleon. He would hardly have 
ventured to destroy his high position for that of an em- 
peror. And yet the royalist factions were so bitter and 
so ambitious that only genius and patriotism could have 
made constitutional government possible. If he had been 
a William III., a Washington, or a Cavour, he might have 
firmly kept the peace and taught the various parties to 
live together at least without fighting. But with his 
character, antecedents, and surroundings that was impos- 
sible. Suppose again that General Changarnier had taken 
the initiative on the part of the Assembly, had arrested 
Louis Napoleon and proclaimed Henry V. The country 
would probably have supported or acquiesced in any gov- 
ernment which showed itself strong enough to maintain 
order, and with either a Legitimist or an Orleans prince 
a few statesmen of the first class ought to have enforced 
the principles of constitutional government. But the 
Assembly was too much split into factions, too barren of 
anything like common public spirit to admit of such a 
course. De Tocqueville gives his reasons for adhering to 
the Republic. 

I wished to maintain it because I saw nothing ready or fit to take 
its place. The old dynasty was thoroughly distasteful to the country. 
In the midst of the lassitude of all political passions, which the fatigue 
of revolutions and their vain promises had produced, one single passion 
has remained alive in France, — the hatred of the old regime and 

1 The subsequent approval by the nation of the course of the President 
shows how a people tends to side with the executive against the legislature 
when it comes to a struggle. The only safeguard is in a close contact 
between the branches, with personal and public responsibility so that the 
people may be fully informed as to the merits of the case. 



248 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

distrust of the old privileged classes which represented it in the eyes 
of the people. As for the Orleans dynasty, the experiment which had 
been made with it did not encourage a repetition. It could not fail 
to repel anew into the opposition all the upper classes and the clergy, 
and to separate itself as it had already done from the people, leaving 
the care and the profit of government to those same middle classes 
which I had seen during eighteen years so incompetent to govern 
France. Louis Napoleon was prepared to take the place of the 
Republic because he alone held power. But what could come from 
his success unless a bastard monarchy, despised by the enlightened 
classes, an enemy of liberty and governed by intriguers, adventurers, 
and valets? 1 

It may be said, however, that a genuine republic was 
the most impossible of all, because the country did not 
know what it was and could not give it sufficient force. 
The nation had just begun to assert its authority over 
Paris, but did not know its own strength or how to put 
it forth. Given the necessity of strong executive power, 
there seems to have been no other way open than to place 
it in the hands of Louis Napoleon, though it may be 
doubted whether any other course could have produced 
such disasters as the German invasion and the Commune. 
That he was what he was was the misfortune of France. 
But with all its evils the Second Empire did this : it 
taught the nation to vote. The plebiscites, whether in his 
own behalf or in the annexation of Nice and Savoy, not- 
withstanding the evil practices by which the results were 
secured, did make all Frenchmen feel the possibility of 
acting together in civil affairs as they have done in war. 
We shall have occasion later to examine the value of this. 
It is to be noted that the German conquerors sternly 
refused to submit to any such test in Alsace and Lor- 
raine. 

The work of the coup oVStat showed again with what 
comparative ease Paris could be kept in order. It was 
not merely the victory achieved by Generals Magnan and 

1 De Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 311. 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 249 

St. Arnaud on the 3d and 4th of December. M. de 
Maupas as prefect of police showed how, if the streets 
had been kept patrolled by strong forces of troops and 
especially of cavalry during the 3d of December and the 
night following, even that conflict might have been 
avoided. The military authorities chose deliberately to 
allow the insurgents till noon on the 4th to erect barri- 
cades and get into fighting order, that the army might, 
as was said, read them a lesson ; or because, as Kinglake 
thinks, General Magnan was frightened at the risk and 
responsibility of the undertaking and only moved when 
driven to it. If the same energy had been displayed in 
1830 or 1848 the disasters of those times might have been 
avoided. In either case, no doubt, the monarchy would 
have been compelled to make some political concessions, 
which, owing to his name, were not necessary for Louis 
Napoleon. 

The instruments employed by the President were 
worthy of the work. Not one single statesman or even 
general of national reputation sided with him. The two 
men who chiefly contributed to his success were De Mau- 
pas, prefect of police, and General St. Arnaud, Minister of 
War. The first of these was, on the breaking out of the 
revolution of February, sub-prefect of Beaune. By de- 
votion to his service and skill in applying it he attracted 
the attention of Louis Napoleon, was rapidly promoted to 
positions of trust, and at the end of September, 1851, called 
to Paris and invited to take the prefecture of police. 
He was a worthy successor of Fouche. 1 Achille de St. 

1 The denunciations of Louis Napoleon are numberless. To appreciate 
his work thoroughly one should read the story of the coup d'etat by De 
Maupas. There is something deeply impressive in the coolness with 
which he condemns all the leading men of France, assumes all the patri- 
otism and all the virtue for his patron, and regards the arrest of all the 
principal statesmen and generals, and finally, of two hundred members of 
the Assembly, as merely incidents in a praiseworthy and well-conducted 
enterprise. 



260 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chxp. 

Arnaud, whose real name was Jacques Le Roy, had three 
times entered the army and had twice left it for dis- 
creditable reasons. He gained distinction in Africa and 
shared with Pelissier the glory of having stifled several 
hundred living Arabs with smoke in a cave. Among his 
qualities were unquestionable bravery, an iron resolution, 
and a complete absence of scruple of any kind. Behind 
these two stood Fleury, the son of a Paris tradesman, 
who had wasted the fortune left him by his father and 
enlisted in the army as a common soldier. Of immense 
energy and audacity, it was he who went to Africa to 
select St. Arnaud and he who held the doubting and 
dreaming Bonaparte to resolute action. After these men 
of action came those of counsel, De Morny, a fashionable 
adventurer of great address and daring, a gambler upon 
the stock exchange and of boundless ambition and greed; 
also Fialin, preferring to call himself De Persigny, who 
began life as a non-commissioned officer and whose lead- 
ing characteristic was devoted service to the Bonapartism 
which he had raised to the dignity of a political principle. 
Not one of these men had a spark of patriotism, states- 
manship, or what is commonly called moral principle. 
Wealth and power were the only gods they worshipped. 1 
By the action of De Maupas and St. Arnaud, who had 
placed the army in and about Paris under officers of their 
own choosing, the leading generals and statesmen of the 
Republic and over two hundred members of the Assembly 
were arrested and thrown into prison until the new govern- 
ment was so firmly established as to be beyond their reach. 
On the 21st of February, 1852, a vote was taken through- 
out France upon the r establishment of the Empire. 

The ayes were 7,824,189 

The noes were 253,145 

1 Kinglake's account of these men may be taxed with exaggeration, 
but it is curious to observe how it tallies in essentials "with the eulogistic 
narrative of De Maupas. 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 251 

How far is this a condemnation of the French people ? 
It must be remembered that the Legitimist and Orleanist 
monarchies had each in turn ended in revolution and 
bloody conflict in Paris and the failure of all government 
through the country. The new government alone had 
shown itself able to maintain order and suppress the 
anarchy which had become the nightmare of all peaceable 
citizens. That it could keep the Paris mob in subjection 
was alone a title to the esteem of the country. If the 
majority had voted against the Empire, what government 
could they possibly have looked to ? It may be said they 
could have abstained from endorsing such a crime. In 
the first place, there was the whole system of prefects and 
their subordinates to exercise pressure upon the people, 
then officers of the army to guide the votes of the soldiers, 
and lastly the Catholic Church, which, true to her policy of 
alliance with the secular power, lent all her influence in 
support of the new regime. And to crown all came flat- 
tering proclamations from the chief of the State, with 
golden promises of blessings to come. 

We have neither space nor inclination to follow the 
government of the Empire, even in the sham liberalism 
which in 1868 was grasped at as a desperate expedient 
when that Empire was tottering to its fall. Those who 
are interested in government by a system of spies, by a 
total suppression of the liberty of the press, of speech, and 
of public assembly, and by a legislature filled with official 
candidates, can find the arguments for them duly set 
forth in the pages of De Maupas. What is here to be 
noticed is external policy. One of the promises held out 
to France was that the Empire would mean peace. Yet a 
little more than two years intervened before the Crimean 
War, in which England indeed joined, but which was 
brought on by Louis Napoleon and the selfish schemers 
like De Morny and St. Arnaud, who were urging him for- 



252 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

ward. The vast expenditure and loss of life led to no 
practical result. Within three years from its close the 
same forces led to the Austrian war of 1859, resulting 
indeed in the independence of Italy, but at a heavy cost 
to Europe in destroying the treaties of 1815 which had 
given her half a century of peace. Three years again 
elapsed and there came the Mexican expedition, surpass- 
ing in folly and infamy any of the others, and crowned by 
the disgrace of the execution of Maximilian and the per- 
emptory notice to quit received after the close of our 
Civil War. The temptation to regard the German inva- 
sion with its infliction of frightful suffering, heavy in- 
demnity, and the loss of two provinces as a just retribution 
upon the Empire is checked only by pity for the unfortu- 
nate nation which thus expiated the sins of its rulers. It 
may well be said that the heaviest curse which has fallen 
upon France in two centuries is the name of Bonaparte. 

Meantime a fresh illustration of the benefits of royal 
and hereditary rule by divine right was developing itself 
before the astonished gaze of mankind. It is a wonderful 
history which begins with the March of Brandenburg, the 
bulwark in the ninth century of the empire of Charlemagne 
against the barbarians of the northeast. It was in 1-115 
that the first Hohenzollern, as Frederick the first elector, 
appears upon the scene. At the Peace of Westphalia in 
1648 we have Frederick William, called the Great Elector 
for the same reason which gained that epithet for his de- 
scendant, because having an efficient army of twenty-five 
thousand men he was able to assert his claim to a large 
slice of the territory to be partitioned after the desolation 
of the Thirty Years' War. His son Frederick I. (1688- 
1713) bought the title of king by furnishing to the 
Austrian emperor eight thousand of his subjects to be 
slaughtered in the War of the Spanish Succession. To 
him succeeded Frederick William I. (1713-1710), the 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 253 

amiable monarch so graphically depicted by Carlyle. 
Thanks to the army and the treasure amassed by him, his 
son Frederick the Great, having taken a fancy to the 
Austrian province of Silesia, pounced upon it, and was 
able to hold it by force, though with a complete exhaus- 
tion of the resources in both kinds left by his father. In 
1756 he plunged into the Seven Years' War, in which 
one hundred and eighty thousand men are said to have 
perished in the Prussian service alone, the population was 
reduced by half a million, and the country was left almost 
in the same condition as after the Thirty Years' War. 
Being, however, as good an economist as soldier, he had 
almost retrieved the loss at his death in 1786, but left 
practically a nation of slaves, without independence or 
power of self-government. How frail and artificial the 
system was, appeared twenty years later when Napoleon 
crushed it like an egg-shell in 1806. In fact, the condi- 
tion of the people in Germany was little better, perhaps 
worse, than that of France, the difference being that the 
former did not revolt. Under the leadership of Stein, 
and for the purpose of arousing enthusiasm against Napo- 
leon, some concessions were made to popular liberty, but 
no sooner was the struggle over than the Holy Alliance 
set to work to rivet the chains again, and the people had 
but little more independence than before. 

The popular uprising in 1848, stimulated by that in 
France, was complicated with the struggle for supremacy 
in Germany between Prussia and Austria. One man, 
however, took in the whole situation. In the period from 
the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth 
century, England, France, Spain, and Russia had brought 
the various feudal powers into subjection to one royal 
house. Germany and Italy still remained split into sepa- 
rate factions. The new Richelieu, moved at once by con- 
tempt for popular liberty and devotion to the Prussian 



254 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

royal house, with a large margin for self-aggrandizement, 
determined to do that which had been done elsewhere in 
Europe two centuries before. A firm believer in the time- 
honored Prussian method of violence, he announced that 
the pending questions must be settled not by majorities 
and minorities, but by " blood and iron." He was sup- 
ported by one of those soldiers who differ from Genghis 
Khan and Tamerlane mainly in the employment of the 
profoundest modern science, and both by a monarch who, 
to the greed and ambition of Frederick II., united a con- 
venient persuasion that he was the special instrument of 
God and the agent of the national will. England and 
France have both marked their progress from absolute 
monarchy to constitutional liberty by cutting off the head 
of a king. The milder manners of the time may prevent 
such an occurrence in Germany, but some equivalent pro- 
test against hereditary rule by divine right will appar- 
ently be necessary before that country can take a front 
rank in government among modern nations. 

The descent upon little Denmark was quite worthy 
of the morality of Frederick the Great in his attack 
upon Silesia, and the swoop which prostrated Austria in 
six weeks would have excited the admiration of that 
monarch ; * while even he hardly reached the degree of 

1 The War of 1866 was entered on not because the existence of Prussia 
was threatened, nor in obedience to public opinion and the voice of the 
people ; it was a struggle long foreseen and calmly prepared for, recog- 
nized as a necessity by the Cabinet, not for territorial aggrandizement or 
material advantage (though the king of Prussia was to become the emperor 
of Germany), but for one ideal end — the establishment of power. — Von 
Moltke, "Franco-Prussian War," Appendix. 

In the first chapter of the book, however, Von Moltke says, "Gener- 
ally speaking, it is no longer the ambition of monarchs that endangers 
peace. The passions of the people, its dissatisfaction with interior condi- 
tions and affairs, the strife of parties, and the intrigues of their leaders 
are the causes. The great wars of the present day have been declared 
against the wish and the will of the reigning power." At that point the 
object of the writer was the condemnation of the French people. 



xii THE SECOND EMPIRE 255 

ingenuity which, having for four years carefully planned 
the invasion of France and mapped out the distribution 
of troops upon her soil, succeeded in persuading all Europe 
that it was France which made the war. It may fairly 
enough be said that the Franco-German War caused more 
human suffering, even on the German side alone, than the 
three French revolutions which had taken place, excluding 
.the period of the two empires. 1 The two cases must be ex- 
cused or condemned according to their results. Opinions 
may differ as to the social and political condition of the 
two countries and time only can pronounce between them, 
but the tearing away of two provinces like Alsace and 
Lorraine, which, whatever the}' may originally have been, 
were at the time as French as any part of France ; the 
military and police coercion of their inhabitants into a 
change of allegiance, which after twenty-five years is said 
to be still only external ; the maintenance of a million of 
men constantly under arms in Europe, with reserves of say 
two millions more, at a cost to Germany alone many times 
more than the provinces are worth ; the keeping of all 
Europe under the nightmare of a coming war compared 
with which anything in modern times seems likely to 
appear almost bloodless; these things can hardly claim 
the unmingled admiration of mankind. When many thou- 
sands of men are sent to slaughter, as many thousands more 
subjected to every form of torture which mangled human- 
ity can endure, and the families of all reduced to penury 
and privation through being bereft of their natural sup- 
porters and protectors, the world looks on with applause, 
provided it is all done scientifically and with the precision 
of a machine, for the aggrandizement of a royal house, or 
of a military caste, to whom wealth and honors are dis- 

1 The war cost the Germans many victims. They lost 6247 officers 
and 123,453 men, one flag, and six guns. — Ibid., Vol. II. , p. 289. And this 
in a campaign of little more thau six months. 



256 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, xii 

tributed. But when the mass of a nation struggles des- 
perately to escape from a political atmosphere which may 
be typified by the Black Hole of Calcutta, and exhausts 
itself in confused and at the same time apparently hope- 
less efforts, then the torrent of indignation breaks loose. 

Was anything ever done by Danton, Robespierre, or 
Marat more brutal than the proposition read before the 
emperor in Council by the much-honored Field Marshal 
von Moltke in 1875? The facts with the evidence are 
given by De Blowitz, correspondent of the London Times, 
in an article in Harper's Magazine for May, 1893, entitled 
" The French Scare of 1875." Von Moltke urged, in view 
of the growing strength of France, that immediate war 
should be declared, Paris surrounded, and if necessary 
destroyed ; that a fine of ten milliards should be imposed 
payable during twenty years without power of anticipa- 
tion, and that garrisons should meantime be maintained 
throughout the country. This he declared was the wisest 
and, with a view to the sparing of future bloodshed, the 
most Christian course. It was Bismarck, who could at 
least understand that the force of public opinion in Europe 
was something different from what it was in the Thirty 
Years' War, through whom this Christian enterprise was 
foiled. Seeing that even his influence with the old em- 
peror was not equal to the tempting bait held out by his 
military surroundings, Prince Bismarck caused the whole 
scheme to be revealed to the French ambassador, through 
whom it reached the Tsar of Russia and he interposed an 
effective veto. One is tempted to turn almost hopefully 
to the Scripture doctrine, that " they who take the sword 
shall perish by the sword." 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 

T~T is difficult to imagine anything more depressing than 
-L the situation of Paris in the beginning of September, 
1870. The emperor had left the city pretty much to take 
care of itself. The entire armies of France, except scanty 
garrisons of the cities and forts, were on the Rhine fron- 
tier. 1 The men who were to make up the Government of 
National Defence had protested with all their energy 
against the war and the insufficient grounds on which 
it was declared. They had charged the ministers with 
acting upon the telegraphic reports of agents and had 
begged for further delay in negotiations, but in vain. 
After the departure of the emperor, they appealed to the 
Corps Legislatif to take the government into its own hands 
and to provide for impending dangers. Both Chamber 
and ministry remained inactive. On Sunday, the 4th of 
September, at 1 p.m., a session was held under the weight 
of the news of the surrender of Sedan, which had taken 
place on the 2d. On the part of the conservatives it 
was proposed that a council of government and defence 
should be appointed by the Chamber, with Count Palikao 

1 The losses at Sedan were 17,000 French killed, principally by artillery, 
21,000 taken prisoners during action, 83,000 surrendered. Total 121,000. 
— Von Moltke, op. cit., Vol. L, p. 135. 

At Metz there were 6000 officers, 167,000 men, taken prisoners, besides 
20,000 sick, who could not be moved at once, making about 200,000. — 
Ibid., Vol. I., p. 222. 

Even if these figures are exaggerated, they indicate a number which, 
with the losses in previous battles, presents nearly the entire French 
forces under arms. 

s 257 



258 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

as lieutenant-general. The Opposition demanded that 
the Chamber should hand over the government to a 
commission of national defence, with the duty of calling 
a constituent assembly as soon as circumstances would 
permit. The members separated and were engaged in 
discussing these plans in their committee rooms, when a 
crowd broke into the building and filled the galleries. 
The members hastily reassembled, but the mob rushed 
in with them, shouting for the overthrow of the Empire 
and the establishment of the Republic. The President 
declared the session at an end. The members of the Left 
appealed to the crowd to preserve order, and Jules Favre, 
obtaining a moment's hearing and dreading a repetition 
of the scenes of May, 1848, proposed an adjournment to 
the Hotel de Ville. 

The scene there was a repetition of that of 1848 minus 
the violence. 1 Through a crowd which filled the building 
and its approaches the deputies representing Paris made 
their way into a small office, itself crowded to repletion, 
and then and there constituted themselves the Government 
of National Defence, with one or two additions in deference 
to the spectators. The names of these eleven men were 
Emanuel Arago, Leon Gambetta, Picard, Cremieux, Gar- 
nier-Pages, Rochefort, Jules Favre, Glais-Bizoin, Jules 
Simon, Jules Ferry, Pelletan, to whom was added General 
Trochu as president and governor of Paris. 

Of these men eight were lawyers, one a man of business, 
two journalists, and one a teacher by profession. Two of 
them had been members of the provisional government of 
1848, being now respectively seventy-five and sixty-seven 
years of age. Besides these only one had held any promi- 
nent executive office. This was Jules Favre. Born in 

1 Hon. E. B. Washbume, United States minister, who was present 
both at the Chamber and the HCtel de Ville, bears emphatic testimony to 
the good nature and peaceableness of the crowds in both places. 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 259 

1809, lie was then sixty-one years of age, and, the son of 
a Lyons merchant, had won his way by untiring industry. 
Having completed his law studies in Paris in 1830, he, 
like other men who afterwards became prominent, had 
made a reputation in the political trials of the time. In 
1848 he was General Secretary of the Interior under 
Ledru-Rollin, and shortly afterwards Under-secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs. Having entered the Corps 
LSgislatif'm 1858, he combated the Empire at every step 
till its fall, while in its last days his eloquence and sin- 
cerity of purpose had made him distinctly the leader of 
the Opposition and marked him out for executive office. 
As vice-president of the new government and Minister of 
Foreign Affairs, to which was added, after the departure 
of Gambetta, the Ministry of the Interior, to him belongs 
the honor of having directed the civil government of Paris 
during the siege, and of having saved the city from starva- 
tion and negotiated the terms of peace, the work of Thiers 
having begun with his appointment to the executive power 
and after the Government of National Defence had passed 
out of existence. 1 

The youngest member of the government was Leon 
Gambetta, a Marseilles lawyer, born in 1838 at Cahors, a 
town about sixty miles north of Lyons. Descended from 
a Genoese commercial family, he had sprung from obscu- 



1 It may be regarded as a favor to our readers to call their attention to 
the three volumes of his "Simple R£cit d'un membre du gouvernement de 
la defense nationale." Apart from the charm of exquisite French prose, 
the simplicity and modesty implied in the title are combined with a degree 
of earnestness and sincerity which carry the conviction of a devoted patriot 
and a thoroughly honest man. Making allowance for errors and short- 
comings, for weaknesses in the management of the populace and the 
National Guard, for irresolution with regard to municipal elections, and 
the irregularities of private life, which are said to have darkened the 
close of his career, he appears as one of the evolutions of individuality 
which go far to justify the first French Revolution, something as Abraham 
Lincoln was in his relation to the people of the United States. 



260 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

rity to reputation through a speech in memory of Baudin, 
one of the victims of the coup oVStat. His age of thirty- 
two years and his fiery southern nature, which refused to 
accept defeat, very nearly wrecked the negotiations for 
peace, but his character was redeemed by other qualities. 1 

Next to him in age was Jules Ferry, who afterwards 
attained to distinction under the Republic. Born at 
St. Die, a manufacturing town in the Vosges, he was 
thirty-eight years of age and had in addition to his legal 
practice made a reputation as a journalist. Acting as 
secretary to the new government, he occupied himself 
with the duties of internal administration of the city, and 
on the 15th of November became maire of Paris, succeed- 
ing Etienne Arago, who, having refused payment for his 
services in that office, resigned because the government 
would not sustain his promises for the election of a 
Commune. 

Henri Rochefort, who seems to have been accepted as 
a concession to the more violent element, and whose unde- 
sirable reputation as a journalist taints everything with 
which his name is connected, may be left out of the 
account, as he also resigned after October 31, for the 
same reason if not with the same motives as M. fitienne 
Arago. A word must be said for Ernest Picard, a native 
Parisian about fifty years old, whose cool and clear-headed 
decisions in moments of crisis are gratefully quoted by 
Favre. 

The head of the military operations was General 

1 For the present purpose take this passage : " After the war was over, 
his enemies put into operation all the machinery of a parliamentary inqui- 
sition, in the hope of blasting his reputation, soiling his honor, and destroy- 
ing him in the public estimation ; pursuing him for months, tracking him 
with spies, they could find no spot upon his garments. With absolute 
control of uncounted and untold millions, they had found his record clean 
and his hands unstained with plunder." — Hon. E. B. Washburne, LL.D., 
"Recollections of a Minister to France," Vol. T., p. 180. 



xiii THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 261 

Trochu. Entering the army in 1840 at twenty-five years 
of age, he served in Algeria as captain in 1843, in the 
Crimea as lieutenant-colonel and afterwards general of 
brigade, and in Italy in 1859 as a general of division. 
In 1867 he lost the favor of the court by publishing a 
pamphlet which revealed too freely the condition of the 
French army, but this did not prevent the emperor from 
naming him governor of Paris on the 17th of August, 1870, 
a position which he held till the close of the siege by the 
choice of the new government, which also made him its 
president. Of his military capacity this work does not 
attempt to judge. The energy displayed in preparing 
the forts and city for a siege, and the fact that he did 
keep the Prussians at bay for four months and a half, are 
in his favor ; but the f ussiness and loquacity which we 
are apt to think characteristic of French officials told 
against him, and that he failed to make efficient soldiers 
out of the material at his command showed that he could 
not have been a born leader. But what is here insisted 
on is the perfect sincerity of his unselfish devotion to his 
work and his country. Sharing these qualities in some 
degree with the men both of 1848 and of 1789-1793, the 
Government of National Defence in the practical applica- 
tion of them shows as great an advance upon the Second 
Republic as that did upon the First, and entitles us to hope 
for everything from the future of popular government in 
France. 

It is worthy of remark that the new government met 
with no opposition whatever from the Corps LSgislatif, the 
Senate, or the ministry, which all disappeared without 
sign. 

The whole fabric of the Empire dissolved at once. All its cham- 
pions, all its obedient functionaries and servants, yielded at once 
without one act of fidelity or devotion. Yet it was from no want of 
courage, still less from calculated defection. It was the instinctive 



262 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

feeling of the human conscience, awakened by the excess of disaster 
and manifested in unanimous reprobation of the man and the system 
which had ruined France. It is this which explains the passiveness 
of the Legislative Body and the ministry. They accepted their fate, 
knowing in their hearts that they deserved it. Perhaps some of them 
were irritated against those of their colleagues who took power, but 
none regarded these as usurpers, for all knew that they had acted 
against their will and because the majority had persistently refused 
to exercise any act of vigor while it was still time. 

And this is the answer to all the accusations which have been 
heaped upon the deputies who on the 4th of September thought it 
their duty to place themselves at the head of public affairs. What 
would have happened if they too had bowed their heads before the 
popular flood, and put their personal safety before that of their 
country? The Commune of Paris would have been installed at the 
Hotel de Ville, and with it civil war, the division of the army, the 
ruin of the defence, the disgrace of defeat through anarchy, dishonor 
in the face of Europe. That was the certain future which was 
reserved for us, and no candid man can deny it. 1 

Meantime the victorious Prussians were advancing on 
Paris, and on the 19th of September the investment 
was complete, and the last electric wire was cut which 
connected the inhabitants with the outer world. Only 
the day previous, M. Favre carried out a resolution to 
make a last desperate effort to avert the impending disas- 
ters. Without the knowledge of the people, or of his 
colleagues except General Trochu, whose permission was 
necessary to pass the French outposts, he sought the 
famous interview with the German Chancellor at Ferrieres. 
The wisdom of his action has been challenged by many, 
but his reasons given appear to be unanswerable. It is 
only in works of fiction that accounts so circumstantial 
are usually given, and no fiction can carry with it the 
intense interest created by fact. The sketch given of 
Count Bismarck was no doubt written afterward, but that 
it was based upon impressions received at the time shows 
the generosity and freedom from egotism of the writer's 

1 Favre. op. cit.. Vol. I., p. 92. 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PAKIS 263 

mind. Already the Prussian terms included the cession 
of Alsace, if not of Lorraine, but it was the demand for 
the surrender, as prisoners of war, of the garrison of 
Strasburg, which still held out, that drove M. Favre to 
close the interview. 

On the 6th of September, M. Favre, as Minister of For- 
eign Affairs, issued a circular to the French diplomatic 
agents abroad, in which he declared that " not an inch 
of our territory or a stone of our fortresses would be 
surrendered." This declaration, in view of subsequent 
events, has been the subject of much ridicule and obloquy ; 
as if it was not the commonest feature of a bargain that 
each side should put forward the extreme terms which it 
even desired to obtain. There is no doubt that the phrase 
expressed the almost unanimous feeling of the country, or 
that it animated the spirit of resistance which was aroused 
by the German demand. Again there was much outcry at 
the folly of the useless resistance of the next five months, 
involving such vast destruction of life and property, so 
much of human suffering, and ending in terms even more 
onerous than were offered in the first interview at Fer- 
rieres. Is there an American with blood in his veins who 
does not honor France for that resistance ? Does it be- 
come us, so proud of our ancestors who for seven years 
held out against Great Britain in a struggle quite as hope- 
less in appearance and with infinitely less cause, to con- 
demn the French because the result was different ? Was 
there not value received in the effect on the spirit of the 
nation? If France had quietly submitted after the fall 
of Sedan and Metz, she would have lost caste among the 
peoples of Europe. It is because she showed herself, even 
under such conditions, almost a match for the Germans, 
that she has recovered her place so rapidly. 

The wonder is that the resistance was possible. Men 
enough indeed there were. According to the Constitu- 



264 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tionnel of September 14 the forces in Paris consisted 
of — 

100,000 gardes-mobiles, or militia from the provinces, 
170,000 national guards, 

9,000 corps francs, 
70,000 regular troops, 

349,000 

and, owing to the energetic measures of General Trochu, 
not only the troops but the forts seem to have been suffi- 
ciently supplied with arms and ammunition. But the 
forces were not efficiently organized or officered. The 
difference between trained and volunteer armies has, in 
this century, greatly increased. To the unmilitary mind 
it seems strange that the Prussians did not force their way 
into the city at the start. They probably knew what 
street fighting on the part of a people like that of Paris in 
defence of their homes against the foreigner really meant, 
and haughty as they were they feared a revolt of the 
public opinion of Europe against such severe measures as 
would be necessary to reduce the city to subjection. They 
decided, therefore, to reduce it by famine, trusting that 
internal dissension would hasten the result. 

It was a spectacle without precedent in history, that of a besieged 
city enclosing in its walls a multitude of nearly two million five hun- 
dred thousand souls, a prey to the severest privations, to unspeakable 
sufferings, and to feverish agitation, and to whom, nevertheless, was 
left complete liberty of thinking, writing, speaking, and assembling. 
In the midst of this multitude, four hundred thousand armed citizens, 
obeying excited chiefs and refusing submission to any regulations 
except those which suited them, represented the public force, and 
might in some hours of aberration overthrow and deliver the city 
which they were charged with defending. Add to this the number- 
less volunteers, the orators of the clubs and the public square, the 
journalists who every morning stirred up passion and preached insur- 
rection, spies and conspirators, and it may be imagined what formida- 
ble difficulties were presented by the conduct of affairs in the midst 
of so many causes of disorder. And yet these five months of martyr- 
dom passed over us, and, except on the days of October 31 and January 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 2G5 

22, in which the seditions were put down without difficulty, order was 
not troubled by civil war, and the insurrection so pleasantly pre- 
dicted and to the concurrence of which the Prussians looked for the 
success of their designs, did not break out till after the government of 
defence ceased to exist, when Prussia, though still established at our 
gates, was bound by a treaty; when disturbances deeply rooted, and 
which might have been avoided, had thrown into the population of 
Paris the seeds of death which some rascals developed with infernal 
skill. 1 

The behavior of the people cannot but excite admira- 
tion. If we consider what a complex problem the daily 
supply of a great city is, — that during those long winter 
nights a matter of such common necessity as the lighting 
of the streets was almost wholly suspended; that for 
weeks at a time there was no communication with the out- 
side world ; that a large part of the population consisted 
of workmen, who though receiving allowance from the 
government were unemployed and idle, — it seems won- 
derful that no more disorder took place. 

The most trying period was that of the 31st of Octo- 
ber. Three events had concurred to excite the population 
to the highest point, — the surrender of Metz, the failure of 
an attack on the village of Bourget, and the report of ne- 
gotiations for an armistice undertaken by Thiers. About 
eleven o'clock on the morning of the 31st some battalions 
of that part of the National Guard which was given up to 
sedition had made their way to the Hotel de Ville, a vast 
crowd began to assemble, and the members of the govern- 
ment were summoned. Favre says that Picard was ear- 
nest in his advice not to go, as it was much wiser to arrange 
the means of repression from the outside, but being over- 
ruled he yielded and went with the others. Etienne 
Arago, the maire of Paris, then Rochefort, and at last 
Trochu tried the effect of their eloquence upon the crowd, 
which kept on increasing every quarter of an hour. 

i Favre, " Simple R&jit," etc., Vol. I., p. 100. 



266 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Towards 2 p.m. a delegation of fifty persons asked admis- 
sion, of whom the spokesman submitted a demand that 
the government should resign and be replaced as fol- 
lows : — 

The electors will be convoked in three days' time to name a Com- 
mune in Paris which -will be composed of eighty citizens, among 
them the members of the future Cabinet, who will be responsible to 
the Commune as it in its turn will be to the French people. The 
powers of the Commune will expire when the hostile army shall have 
evacuated the soil of France and a regular Constituent Assembly 
shall have been named. 

The members of the government retired to consult. 
But the tumult outside had been increasing. Shots were 
fired, no one knows whence. The door of the room in 
which the members were sitting around a table was 
forced, the crowd swarmed in, the leaders jumped upon 
the table, and one of them, the notorious Flourens, ad- 
dressed the crowd in a squeaking voice, declaring the gov- 
ernment deposed, naming a new one, and calling for space, 
that they might have room to deliberate. Meantime the 
members of the government retained their seats, Favre 
impassible, Simon sketching disdainfully upon some paper 
before him, and Trochu quietly regarding the guns pointed 
at him. All steadily refused to resign or to sign an order 
for the election of the Commune. Presently a battalion 
of the better part of the National Guard came cleaving the 
crowd like a wedge and carried off General Trochu, be- 
hind whom Emanuel Arago, Ferry, and Pelletan cleared 
themselves a passage, though Favre, Simon, and three 
others were still held back by the crowd. The members 
thus set free, following up the preparations of Picard, who 
had got out of the building at an early stage, proceeded 
to organize relief. A battalion of mobiles from Finisterre 
entered the Hotel de Ville through a subterranean passage 
known to but few ; another force of the party of order 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 267 

entered from the outside, and the insurgents, finding them- 
selves between two fires, quickly dispersed. At three 
o'clock in the morning Favre, who had eaten nothing but 
a piece of coarse bread and a slice of half-cooked horse 
given him by one of his captors, was released, but before 
seeking the needed repose visited the governor to concert 
the necessary measures for preserving order, and appointed 
a meeting for seven in the morning. 1 

Thus far the Government of National Defence, with 
scruples which would not have troubled Danton or Robes- 
pierre, had suffered from the vice of its origin. It was 
wholly self- constituted, and therefore timid in exercising 
its authority. It determined now to imitate the Second 
Empire in one respect by taking a plebiscite. On the 
1st of November appeared a proclamation asking for a 
popular vote. The government, it said, owes to itself to 
ask of the citizens whether or not it retains their con- 
fidence. If universal suffrage pronounces against the 
government as actually constituted, within twenty-four 
hours the people will be called upon to provide a sub- 
stitute. If it declares, on the contrary, that power shall 
remain in the same hands, the men who now hold it will 
continue to hold it with this new confirmation. But that 

1 Mr. T. J. Bowles, correspondent of the Morning Post, in his "De- 
fence of Paris," thus describes the scene : — 

u An accepted government with all the signs and appurtenances of 
authority is suddenly replaced at its own council board by a few individ- 
uals without striking a blow in self-defence, then these same individuals 
are ousted in their turn without striking a blow and finally they embrace 
all round. Surely this passes the wildest bounds of the burlesque." 

The events of the Commune were to show how perilously near it was 
to the tragic. And yet these conditions point out how even the latter 
might have been dealt with by firm and cool resolution. The same old 
trouble had reappeared, the want of any settled and stable public opinion, 
the absence of mutual confidence in the community, the failure of self- 
assertion on the part of honest and lawful government in behalf of the 
great majority against the violence of the few. The weakness of execu- 
tive power is the most difficult of all the problems with which popular 
government has yet to deal. 



268 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

no one may be deceived as to the meaning of the vote to 
be taken, they declare in advance that the uprising of 
October 31 must be the last of the siege ; that they will 
no longer allow any obstacle to come from within. That 
the government should pass its time in arguing and de- 
fending itself when it is time to act without ceasing 
against the enemy, that the National Guard and the 
army should exhaust themselves amid cold and fatigue 
in the streets when they ought to be on the ramparts, 
is a crime against the nation and against common sense. 
It cannot be reproduced. 

The voting was conducted in perfect liberty and profound 
calm. Mr. Bowles, in his "Defence of Paris," remarks 
upon the difference from the noise and turmoil of an 
English election. Nothing was to be seen except indi- 
viduals quietly approaching the polling booths, depositing 
their ballots, and going away again. The result was over- 
whelmingly on behalf of the government, 557,996 votes 
against 62,638. The significance of these votes can 
hardly be overestimated. The question was plainly put, 
and the answer was emphatic. It seems as if it might 
have been strong enough not only to prevent disorder 
during the siege but the subsequent deeds of the Com- 
mune. A popular government, however, which will act 
with stern despotism on behalf of the great mass of the 
people, is apparently a desideratum yet to be attained. 

As M. Favre tried every means to interest the European 
powers on behalf of France, so Count Bismarck tried to 
throw on the French the blame of refusing the armistice 
which was the object of the negotiations with M. Thiers 
in October. Both Favre and Thiers demanded the " pro- 
portionate revictualling " of Paris during the armistice, 
that is, a supply of provisions which would place the city 
in the same condition at the end that it was in at the 
beginning. This Bismarck positively refused to grant. 



xiii THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 269 

The Frenchmen replied that, as their hands would be tied 
for offensive operations both in the city and the prov- 
inces, and as the city must sooner or later be reduced by 
starvation unless relief came, such an armistice would 
simply enable the Germans to carry on their siege opera- 
tions without molestation with no guarantee of any results 
for France. Assuming that the French still had hopes of 
success and were not prepared to surrender at discretion, 
the argument seems conclusive. 

While Paris was thus determined not to yield, the same 
spirit was animating the provinces. The three men who 
left Paris in September as delegates of the Government of 
National Defence — Cremieux, Glais-Bizoin, and Admiral 
Fourichon — were, with the exception of the last, who yet 
declined to act in opposition to his colleagues, among its 
weakest members ; and when Gambetta, on the 9th of 
October, descended from his balloon voyage nothing had 
been done. A German military writer * has done justice 
to the tremendous energy of Gambetta and his wonderful 
insight into the conditions and requirements of the situa- 
tion ; has shown how in a few weeks he raised an army 
of one hundred and eighty thousand men and kept it con- 
stantly renewed, and how by his command of the sea he 
contrived that it should be at least as well supplied as his 
German opponents. 2 The achievements of Gambetta may 
be compared with those of Danton and Carnot in the last 
century, but the enemy was different. The profoundest 

1 Baron Colmar von der Goltz, " Gambetta and his Armies." 

2 Comment ! Pendant vingt ans Bonaparte a prepare" ses moyens 
d' agressions, organize", depense" vingt milliards. La France a consenti 
a tout, elle a tout donne", hommes et argent : quinze jours ont sum et tout 
a disparu. Et nous qui n'avions rien trouvd, qui n'avions eu pour moyen 
que les ressources improvised par 1' initiative du pays, nous resistons depuis 
quatre mois devant un ennemi qui multiplie ses forces, mais qui sent bien 
que si la resistance continue a embraser l'ame de la France e'en est fait 
de l'invasion. — Favee, " Simple Ke"cit," etc., Vol. II. Discours de Gam- 
betta a Lille, 19 Janvier, 1871, quoted in the pieces justificatives. 



270 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

resources of organization and science which make the 
difference between ancient and modern war : a corps of 
officers, perhaps as well selected and as carefully trained 
as any army ever possessed ; an iron discipline which 
made of the troops animated machines ; these were the 
German strength. On the side of the French, apart from 
a few sailors from the navy and regular troops, there were 
only peasants and militia ; officers taken at random, some 
among whom, however, like General Chanzy, compelled 
admiration from their opponents ; a dictator, who with 
all his energy was a civilian and not a soldier. The con- 
test was too unequal. The only question was, as has 
been already intimated, whether it was hopelessly so to 
a degree which made it mere insane folly. 

An important consideration is as to the degree of harsh- 
ness and cruelty of the invading armies. No doubt men 
of the stamp of Bismarck and Von Moltke were exasperated 
at what seemed to them a wantonly continued resistance. 
They remembered how, after the battle of Jena in 1806, 
the government of Prussia had completely collapsed, and 
the country lay prostrate at the feet of Napoleon. They 
had seen their own invasion result in the surrender of 
Sedan with the emperor of the French and a large army, 
and the locking up in Metz of almost the whole remainder 
of the available armies of France. That a group of lawyers, 
without military experience or apparent resources and with 
no authority from anybody, should take the government 
into their own hands, sustain a siege in Paris, and keep 
up a corresponding resistance in the provinces for nearly 
five months seemed to them a clear violation of the laws 
of war, and to be visited with a just severity. 1 Probably, 

1 Prussian pretensions are enormous. They positively assume to con- 
sider as a violation of the laws of war any attempt made by Frenchmen 
to defend their own lives and property, and massacre without mercy and 
in cold blood anybody who stirs a finger against them, while they burn 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 271 

however, their conduct was no worse than that of an 
invading army will always be. The crime was in the 
deliberate planning and carrying on of the war. Towards 
the end of December the bombardment of Paris began, 
which was to continue for a month. To the protest of the 
foreign consuls and the surgeons against the bombardment 
of private residences and hospitals, Von Moltke, most 
scientific of artillerists, replied that it was impossible to 
control the fire in the mist and the night, that he should 
soon rectify it by approaching nearer the city walls, and 
that if he did depart from the laws of war it was no more 
than the French had done since September 4. 

In the month of December a conference of the powers 
was called to meet in London with reference to the treaty 
of 1856 relating to the neutralization of the Black Sea. 
Lord Granville sent to M. Favre a polite invitation to be 
present, and stated that out of consideration for him the 
meeting would be postponed to January 3. The struggle 
in the mind of the Frenchman was intense. On the one 
hand it seemed impossible that the condition of France 
should not be taken up by the conference and there was 
every hope that better terms might be obtained. Gam- 
betta in his pigeon despatches strongly urged the departure. 
The result of this, however, was uncertain. What was 
quite certain was that Paris was rapidly approaching the 
period when it must surrender or starve. Favre alone 
could lead it through this crisis and the call of duty com- 
pelled him to remain. Fortunately Count Bismarck, who 
did not want him in London and did want him in Paris, 
settled the question by delaying on frivolous pretexts the 
transmission, first of the invitation and then of the safe- 
conduct, till on the 15th of January it was too late. 

Day by day the government had taken account of the 

any town that is unable to satisfy the kind of robbery they call requisi- 
tion. — T. G. Bowles, "Defence of Paris." 



272 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

supply of provisions, but kept the knowledge from the 
people. On the 23d of January the return showed re- 
sources sufficient, with the scanty rations allowed, to last 
till the 31st. It would take at least a week or ten days 
to introduce supplies from the outside, and a few days of 
delay might condemn a large part of the two millions of 
inhabitants to death by starvation. No time was to be 
lost. And yet the question presented itself, Was it better 
to negotiate or to surrender at discretion and to put upon 
Prussia the responsibility of taking possession of her con- 
quest, of creating an imposed government, and organizing 
an administration? Suppose that in the process scenes 
like those of the Commune had taken place, the horror of 
Europe would have been too much even for Prussia to 
bear, 1 and if the country had been thereby driven to 
further desperate resistance her power might have been 
seriously tested. Again, it was a question whether to 
make peace for Paris alone, or for the whole country, as 
to which the authority of the government then in the city 
was questionable. All these things M. Favre had for a 
month been revolving in his mind. The municipal officers 
had refused to take any share in the burden of negotiat- 
ing. His colleagues, while recognizing the necessity of 
treating, agreed in insisting that his official position and 
his former relations with Count Bismarck pointed to him 
as the sole negotiator. 

Early on the morning of the 24th of January an officer 
of General Trochu's staff, Captain d'Herisson, to whom 
Favre accords his usual generous meed of praise, started 
for the Prussian lines. At half-past four no answer had 
been received. An icy fog hung over the city. The 
cannonade from the forts and the ramparts seemed heavier 
than ever, while the shells rained down. About five 

1 A repetition of the burning of Moscow in 1812 was not an inviting 
prospect. 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 273 

o'clock, as M. Favre was waiting in anguish, the door 
opened and the officer appeared with a letter from Bis- 
marck, offering an interview the next day, or that ensuing 
if desired. A few minutes sufficed for preparation. 
Taking by carriage a circuitous route to avoid public 
observation, M. Favre crossed the Seine in a small boat 
among the floating ice, the darkness being relieved only 
by the flames of burning St. Cloud, while his companion 
kept the boat free from the water which leaked in by the 
Prussian bullet-holes. Was there ever a more momentous 
mission given to man ? 

Of the next twenty-four hours M. Favre gives a de- 
tailed account. While doing full justice to Count Bis- 
marck's manner, he shows himself in the hands of men — 
for Bismarck constantly referred for decision to the king and 
Von Moltke — to whom mercy meant weakness, and who 
openly declared themselves to be governed by no motives 
but their own interest. It has been vaunted as an instance 
of great magnanimity that the Germans consented to 
waive the occupation of Paris. In fact, it was a simple 
choice of alternatives. Favre positively declined to be 
responsible for the consequences if the Germans did enter 
the city. They must decide either not to enter it at all, 
or to take possession of it entirely and govern and admin- 
ister it as a conquered city. 

The compromise, submitted to by M. Thiers in a subse- 
quent interview as a consideration for the retaining of 
Belf ort by the French, and by which the Germans were to 
occupy only a small district including the Champs felysees, 
had a curious result. By the terms of the preliminary 
treaty even this portion was to be evacuated immediately 
upon the presentation of a ratification by the Assembly. 
On the 1st of March under a splendid sunshine the troops 
marched by the Avenue de Neuilly and around the Arch 
of Triumph to the district assigned to them. The emperor 



274 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

had arranged for his triumphal entry on the 3d, and the 
different army corps were to succeed each other in the 
encampment. Meantime M. Thiers at Bordeaux was 
feverishly urging the Assembly to vote the ratification. 
At eleven o'clock in the evening of March 1, a telegram 
reached M. Favre that the vote had been passed. He 
could not pass the Prussian lines at night, but at six in 
the morning he was on his way, and by seven reached the 
lodgings of Count Bismarck at Versailles. The Chan- 
cellor had retired, and expressly forbidden disturbing him 
before noon. All that could be done was to leave a 
written message. Foreseeing that a telegram would not 
be accepted as sufficient, the Frenchmen had made every 
preparation. The official protocol had been drawn up in 
advance at Bordeaux ; a locomotive waited at the station 
with steam up. In a moment after the vote was passed 
the papers were filled up, signed, and sealed, and an agent 
started for Paris. Half an hour after noon on the 2d 
he entered the room where Favre was waiting, and while 
the latter was examining the stamps and seals, a tele- 
gram came from Count Bismarck apologizing for not re- 
ceiving the minister and saying that a second visit would 
be useless, as a formal record of the deliberations of the 
Assembly would be requisite for the exchange of ratifica- 
tions. 

Favre at once replied, " Your Excellency's objection is 
perfectly just. I shall leave in a few minutes for Ver- 
sailles and shall have the honor to submit to you the 
most complete satisfaction." Taking with him the ex- 
pert chief of the protocol department, he appeared before 
Count Bismarck, who could not conceal his surprise and 
displeasure at such prompt action. Every word and 
phrase of the document had to be scrutinized in search 
of an irregularity. But after half an hour of examina- 
tion there was no escape. The emperor had to give up 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PAK1S 275 

his triumphal entry, and that of the troops was limited 
to the detachment which had already passed in. 

This is not the place to follow the details of negotia- 
tion which were continued at Frankfort and ended in the 
payment of the ransom and the evacuation of French 
territory. On the 12th of February, 1871, M. Thiers 
having been elected chief of the executive power, the 
Government of National Defence surrendered its power 
into the hands of the National Assembly. Its members 
retired from office poorer than they had entered it. At 
the earnest solicitation of Thiers M. Favre retained the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and supported him loyally 
through all the negotiations which followed. On the 
29th of July, 1871, taking advantage of a vote by the 
Assembly which pointed to the restoration of the temporal 
power of the Pope, he resigned his office and retired to 
private life. 

What of detail has been here given is intended to show 
that, measured by the standard of human achievement 
and the circumstances being given, this company of un- 
known civilians proved themselves to be fully equal to 
the selected agents of absolute monarchy, and that the 
results of the emancipation from caste, of the equality 
of all men before the law, and of popular government 
which were inaugurated in France by the first Revolu- 
tion, have in so far given no ground for discouragement. 
To this point, indeed, from the commencement of the war 
there is nothing, upon the whole, to stain the honor or 
diminish the reputation of the French people. As it was 
the deeds of the Commune which came to add disgrace 
to humiliation and disaster, a short review of them may 
now be permitted. 

We have seen the share which was taken by the 
National Guard in the Revolution of 1848. This institu- 
tion was established in 1789. Under the First Empire it 



276 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

was disarmed, under the Restoration disbanded. Rees- 
tablished in 1830, it was again suspended under the 
Second Empire, but restored by the Government of Na- 
tional Defence on the footing of 1851. On the 8th of 
August, 1870, the following proposition was submitted 
to the Chamber, and became the basis of the new organi- 
zation. 

Seeing that the efforts of all citizens are required to repel invasion 
and that every inhabitant is entitled to the weapons necessary for the 
defence of his home, the Chamber decrees that arms shall be imme- 
diately distributed to all the able-bodied citizens inscribed upon the 
electoral lists. 1 

The rush of citizens to be enrolled was so great that it had not 
been practicable to require any proof of domicile or even of nation- 
ality; foreigners, old men, vagabonds, condemned criminals, minors, 
had received arms. Out of 360,000 applicants two-thirds were neither 
clothed nor equipped, though a large part afterwards came to be. 2 
. . . And these men elected their officers and exercised largely the 
police of the city. The pay was thirty cents per day, increased later 
to forty-five cents for a family. The men spent it in idleness and 
often in drink, instead of taking it to their families, and yet — as 
M. Favre says — without the pay there would not only have been no 
National Guard, but it would have been impossible to suppress the 
outbreaks of wrath and famine which would have destroyed and dis- 
honored the defence. 8 

From the very beginning the population of Paris — and the same 
is in a measure true of the National Guard — had been divided into 
two camps : those who had seen in the siege only a means of arming 
revolution, of living without working, of getting themselves fed and 
paid to fulfil a duty which they singularly lightened by the fixed 
determination not to fight, and those, in much greater number, who 
had supported the siege in good faith, with all the ardor of real 
patriotism, and looked for no other reward for their obscure sacrifices 
than the having contributed to the safety of the country. 4 

Trochu would not listen to me when I told him he was wrong in 
not making better use of the National Guard. If he had encamped 
them outside of the fortifications and hardened them by constant skir- 
mishing with the enemy, taking care to keep them in advantageous 
positions, I have no doubt that in the grand battle they would have 

1 Favre, op. cit., Vol. I., p. 35. * Ibid., p. 212. « lb id., p. 251. 

4 Delpit, u Report of a Committee on the Insurrection of March 18," 
p. 23. 



xni THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 277 

done their duty. Instead of that they were kept shut up in quarters 
and allowed to organize themselves for the triumph of an unsound 
demagogy, while the men were paid regularly and were quite content 
to be supported in doing nothing. They were made to execute some 
delusive attacks, after which they returned in triumph to the sound of 
drums and music when they had not seen the enemy, or else in un- 
speakable disorder when their heads of columns had heard the balls 
whistle. Thus they were of no use and remain to-day all armed for 
disorder, since their guns have been left them just at the time when 
the regulars were disarmed, as Bismarck himself pointed out to Jules 
Favre. We shall see by and by what that will lead to, and I am 
very much afraid lest when they begin to withdraw from the National 
Guard the pay which has been given them since the beginning of the 
siege, we may have to sustain against them a struggle even fiercer and 
more bloody than that of June, 1848. 1 

The origin of the outbreak must be sought in that of the 
Central Committee. After the 4th of September numerous 
committees sprang up all over the city, and while the Gov- 
ernment of National Defence was taking shape there was 
forming in the Hotel de Ville at the same moment another 
central committee under Rochefort to dispute the su- 
premacy. This committee existed all through the siege, 
though it did not complete its organization till March 3. 
In the month of December was formed a Republican Fed- 
eration of the National Guard, which in February chose a 
central committee of the whole body. A federal com- 
mittee of the National Guard was also formed to attend to 
questions relating to pay. These two committees were 
consolidated, and on the 3d of March were by negotiation 
merged in the main Central Committee above described, 
which thus became the directing authority. Its members 
were regularly elected in the fourth degree from the gen- 
eral assemblies of the companies, the other three degrees 
remaining as local committees and transmitting orders to 
the 215 battalions who joined the federation. In their 

1 Conversation of General Le F16, Minister of War, at Bordeaux, after 
the armistice, reported by General Thoumas, " Paris, Tours, et Bordeaux," 
p. 245. 



278 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

declaration of the rights of the armed population the com- 
mittee state that " The Republic being the only rightful 
government cannot be subordinate to universal suffrage, 
which is its work. The National Guard has the right of 
naming all its chiefs and of revoking them when they have 
lost the confidence of their constituents." 

This power of the committee from the first, therefore, 
had just as much reason of existence as the Government of 
National Defence, and in the end was much more strongly 
established, especially after that government had resigned 
on February 12 and the nominal supremacy had passed 
to the Assembly at Bordeaux, with Thiers as the executive 
head. The leaders of the Commune were not merely un- 
known men who grasped at dictatorial power. They were 
regularly constituted with an administrative system, and 
they had the singleness of purpose and fixed resolution 
which characterize men who are contending for their own 
personal interest, which are almost surely wanting to men 
who are acting in the interest of others, and which in the 
latter case can only be supplied by a clear conviction of 
the support of a strong and united public opinion. The 
reasons of the non-success of the Central Committee on 
October 31 are given as follows : — 

1. The full organization of the revolutionary forces did 
not go back beyond the general assemblies of February 
15, and the 3d and 15th of March — that is, after the Gov- 
ernment of National Defence had resigned and Paris was 
left practically without any government at all. 

2. Up to the capitulation the battalions of order were 
completely organized and full, and more than balanced 
those of revolution. 

3. Up to that time the regular army obeyed the gov- 
ernment. 

4. During the siege the population faced the enemy and 



xiii THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 279 

the sentiment of patriotic duty was in force. They still 
hoped to conquer and had not undergone the disgrace of 
surrender and disarmament. 1 

It was with the armistice that the forces of disorder 
came to a head. The people had been stimulated by the 
government with hopes of victory from the combined 
efforts of the city and the provinces, and the danger of 
starvation had been concealed from them. The capitula- 
tion which proclaimed that their sacrifices were in vain 
came like a thunderclap and produced an outburst of rage. 
Just as prolonged solitary confinement ends in madness, so 
the shutting up of this great city for five months from the 
outside world, with the total subversion of all their habits 
and modes of life, had produced in the inhabitants a men- 
tal condition approaching insanity. The Committee of 
Inquiry, in making this remark, report in their evidence 
that Count Bismarck, in the council of the king of Prussia, 
had always opposed the siege of Paris. " You are taking 
upon yourselves all the responsibility of events which will 
be horrible, and the siege of Jerusalem will be nothing 
compared with that of Paris." And they quote Thiers as 
having made on the 21st of August the same comparison. 2 

Again, before the siege began the well-to-do classes had 
taken their families into the country, and left them ill 
supplied with money and resources. When, after five 
months of separation, the armistice came to release the 
former there was an exodus, perfectly natural but fatal in 
its effect. Those classes had never been trained to feel 
that the responsibility of preserving order rested upon 
each individual in his proportion. Nearly sixty thousand 
of the National Guard, officers and men, were said to have 
left the city, all belonging to the party of order, and who 
thus left the city at the mercy of the violent. 

1 Jules Simon, " Government of M. Thiers," Vol. I., p. 176. 
2 Delpit, "The 18th of March," Chap. I., p. 19. 



280 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In accordance with the terms of the armistice the gov- 
ernment stated in their proclamation of January 25, 1871: 
" The National Guard will preserve intact its organization 
and its arms. A division of twelve thousand men (of 
other troops) remains in arms. The other soldiers will 
retain their swords." Of this latter class there were 
nearly two hundred thousand who, instead of being placed 
in a camp, were turned loose to mingle with the population 
while they were indignant at the distinction made between 
them and the National Guard. To them were added ad- 
venturers of all kinds, not merely French, but from all 
Europe — Garibaldians, corps-francs, and mobiles. There 
was no doubt that the great cause of the insurrection was 
the failure to disarm the National Guard, of which Bis- 
marck pointed out the danger. But could it have been 
done ? The National Guard was determined not to be 
disarmed. Admiral Pothuau maintained that by taking 
a few battalions at a time it could and should have been 
done. General Le Flo, Minister of War, said that it 
would have taken several days and if a conflict had arisen 
it would have stopped the revictualling of Paris and 
starved the people. At all events the government as 
a body expressed great relief when they learned that 
it was not to be attempted. It seems, however, that 
the large number of cannon which had been made dur- 
ing the siege, and which lay almost unprotected, should 
have been kept out of the hands of the National 
Guard. The rumor that the Prussians at their entry 
intended to take possession of them was made use of to 
arouse the people, who seized and dragged them to the 
heights of Montmartre. It was the feeble and unsuccess- 
ful attempt of the government of Thiers to retake them 
which brought on the armed conflict. 

The maires of Paris attempted to retain some control. 
On the 5th of March they were assembled at the Ministry 



xiii THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 281 

of the Interior, when M. Vautrain of the fourth ward 
declared that the danger was not in the cannon but in 
the Central Committee, and urged the immediate arrest 
of its members. But the maires were twenty in number, 
more or less in sympathy with the people, and they pre- 
ferred conciliation, the futility of which was shown by 
the recklessness with which the Central Committee broke 
all its agreements. In fact, that committee did not at- 
tempt to conceal that the object of their hostility was not 
the Prussians but the government, and when the former 
entered the city the committee drew a cordon of guards 
round the district to prevent collision with the people. 
The departure of the Prussians rather increased than 
calmed the excitement. 

On the 19th of February the government passed a 
decree that pay should be accorded only to those of the 
National Guard who should make written application and 
prove their necessities. It was the first step towards a 
total suppression of pay, and its effects were an exaggera- 
tion of those which followed the same step in the national 
workshops of 1848. Moreover, during the siege all ordi- 
nary business had been suspended. Mercantile debts and 
rents had not been paid. The Assembly undertook to 
fix a time when payments should be resumed, and bank- 
ruptcy staring them in the face added to the silent 
despair with which the world of small traders regarded 
the proceedings of the Commune. 

It is an interesting question whether the evacuation of 
Paris by the army, ordered by M. Thiers after March 18, 
and which caused the greatest disasters of the Commune, 
was necessary. 1 Generals Vinoy and Le Flo, the Minister 

1 De Persigny relates that at the time of the threatened popular 
uprising of January 27, 1849, he was sent by the President, Louis Napo- 
leon, to ask the advice of his minister, M. Thiers, which was this, "Tell 
the prince that I call upon him to summon Marshal Bugeaud at once 



282 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

of War, supported Thiers. It had been found by inquiry 
that no part of the National Guard could be relied on 
against the rest. The regular troops had on several 
occasions fraternized with the insurgents. On the other 
hand, the rest of the ministry strongly urged remaining 
in Paris at any risk. M. Jules Ferry, the maire of Paris, 
was at the Hotel de Ville with a regiment of the line, 
and the adjoining Lobau barracks held a hundred men 
with four thousand cartridges. He protested in the 
strongest manner against leaving the building and urged 
its defence. After repeated communications a formal 
order came from General Vinoy, which the officer in com- 
mand declined to disobey. The Hotel de Ville was aban- 
doned on March 27 and the Commune entered, to remain 
there seventy-two days, and ended by destroying it. It 
is difficult to resist the conviction that if a chief with the 
resolution of Cavaignac or Gambetta had been at the head 
of affairs much of the disgrace and disaster of that time 
might have been spared. This feeling is strengthened by 
the conduct of Lieutenant-Colonel Lockner in the fort of 
Mont Valerien. That fort was the only one which was 
not abandoned, though included in the formal order of 
Thiers, and it was the most important means in the 
recovery of the city. Colonel Lockner had but twenty- 
five men with inferior guns, but when a battalion of 
National Guards presented itself and proposed to occupy 
the fort, he told their leader he would give him and his 
men ten minutes to quit the place, failing which he would 
sweep them away with his artillery. M. Thiers never 
possessed that kind of courage. 

The inaction of the Prussians during this long period 

from Lyons, and to propose to the Assembly to adjourn to some provin- 
cial city, Chalons or Orleans, out of reach of clubs and under the 
protection of the army." The envoy is strong in his expression of 
surprise and contempt. — " M&noires," p. 40, 1896. 



xni THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 283 

also requires explanation. Bismarck had allowed the gov- 
ernment to increase their army gradually from the fifteen 
thousand men allowed by the treaty to one hundred thou- 
sand, but he pursued them with bitter complaints of the 
delay in recovering the city, and threatened constantly to 
take the matter into his own hands. This last of calamities 
M. Favre strove to avert with all the energy of despair. 
He pointed out to Count Bismarck that if he did he 
would find no government to deal with, that the nation 
would infallibly reject any government which should sub- 
mit to such humiliation, and that it would be impossible 
to carry out the terms of peace. As the Germans from 
the stern and increasing necessity of returning their own 
army to its homes wanted peace almost as much as the 
French, Count Bismarck yielded to the argument. 

The moral causes of the insurrection are discussed in 
the report of the Committee of Inquiry by M. Favre and 
other writers. The corruption of the Empire comes first 
with its system of repression and material compensation. 1 
The people were treated like beasts, and when the occasion 
came behaved like them. The committee dwell upon the 
decay of religious faith and moral principle, and they 
point to the religious appeals of Gladstone and Lincoln, 
and, they add, Grant. An American may be permitted to 
remark that the only religion offered to the French has 
been the Roman Catholic, with its history in France, and 
to expect that, whatever may be the merits of individuals, 
a populace will be kept in subjection by implicit faith in 
the dogmas, precepts, and practices of that religion is to 
lean upon a broken reed. But the one cause to which 
all parties appeal is the want of confidence and toleration 
between classes. The committee say : — 

Is it not indispensable for the security of our country that the 
party which demands at once order and liberty should seriously 

1 Panem et circenses. 



284 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

organize itself? If on the 18th of March it had been disciplined, 
erect, as it is in England, this oppressive and shameful reign of 
seventy-two days would not have lasted even for a few hours. 1 

And again : — 

The grand cause of the 18th of March, that which perpetuated the 
danger of this mad insurrection, which prevents France from settling 
herself and working at least for the reparation of so much disaster, is 
the abstention of honest people, the timidity and inertia of the great 
conservative party. 2 We have not enough in France of civic courage. 
To fight against an enemy is no difficulty for anybody, but to express 
aloud one's opinion, not to yield to the clamor of an erring crowd, to 
protest against crazy follies which make all sensible men shrug their 
shoulders, that is what we do not know how to do. 8 

Once more : — 

Let honest men unite, a great conservative and liberal party be 
everywhere constituted, let those who wish for liberty, order, prop- 
erty, family, religion, be ranged under the same flag, and they will 
be astonished at the small number of their adversaries. But with 
universal suffrage, with liberty, with the progress of democracy, which 
seems to be the law of the future, the good must be everywhere and 
always in the breach. No more abstentions, no one must desert the 
combat. 4 

The evil remains still almost untouched because the 
nation has not yet found the secret of organizing strong 
but responsible executive power in which all can have 
confidence, and forming the only instrument by which all 
can work together. 

The fact is that the character of a people is moulded by 
the traditions and habits of generations. The elements 
of the population of East London are probably no better 
than of that of Paris. But the strength, the stability, 
and the liberality of government in Great Britain have 
averted civil war for a hundred and fifty years. The popu- 
lace of London are not trained to arms, and have no idea 

1 Delpit, "The 18th of March," Part I., p. 337. 

2 Note how familiar this complaint sounds as the cause of bad politics 
in this country. 8 Ibid., p. 357. 4 Ibid., Part II., p. 246. 



xin THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE OF PARIS 285 

of resorting to them, but are kept in order by a simple 
police, firm, yet considerate and sympathetic. A free 
press trained to decency, a widespread public opinion, 
keep all classes acquainted with each other. Great re- 
forms have been accomplished by peaceful agitation and 
mutual concessions, and there are no threatening signs of 
internal change. In France, a hundred years ago, the 
middle class threw off with a violent explosion the selfish 
rule of priests and nobles, yet none of these classes had in 
1870 assimilated itself to the others or to the people. 
Distrust and violent hostility still held sway. The nation 
had no conception of any redress of grievances excepting 
by force of arms, and each generation followed the example 
and the traditions of its fathers. All other governments 
have failed. What will popular government do ? That 
would be the interesting question of the next century for 
France were it not, alas ! complicated by the external 
conditions which have added so much to the miseries of 
the past centuries. 

On the 18th of January, while the siege of Paris was 
drawing to a close, there was presented in the palace of 
Versailles a scene which formed a strange commentary on 
the course of events. The " blood-and-iron " system of 
uniting Germany had reached its goal. In the palace of 
Louis XIV., in the ballroom where Queen Victoria of Eng- 
land feasted with Napoleon III., emperor of the French, 
William, king of Prussia, was to be crowned Emperor of 
Germany. The place was worthy of the event. It was 
expressly devoted to the glorification of Louis XIV., the 
man who brought France nearer to ruin than any one 
previous to the Bonapartes. The blaze of gilding, mirrors, 
allegorical pictures, and glass panels now framed in the 
black-robed priests and the steel-bearing soldiers of Ger- 
many. The king, dressed in the full uniform of a German 
general, takes his place by the clergy in front of the tern- 



286 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, xiii 

porary altar. On the right of the king was the crown 
prince in the nniform of a field marshal, and then to the 
right and left were the leaders of the hosts which had 
made that king emperor, while at the left of the semi- 
circle of which the king was the centre, and separated by- 
more than a yard from any one else, stood Count Bismarck. 
And psalms were sung and prayers were said and court 
preacher Rogge preached a sermon of which the burden 
was, — 

" God hath done wonders in this land, and we have 
done them for Him." And then amid such waving of 
swords and helmets and hurrahs as fitly greet great con- 
querors, William was hailed Emperor of Germany, and 
with tearful eyes received the congratulations of princes, 
dukes, and lords of his empire. 1 

Is it not a scene of a thousand years ago, with Charle- 
magne and his paladins standing by a conquered city and 
declaring that there is no law but force ? A scene repeated, 
not by a Corsican adventurer of genius trampling upon 
anything and everything which opposed his will, nor in 
principle by a mob of poor, ignorant, and suffering men 
in an outbreak of passion, but by the so-called legitimate 
rulers of a civilized nation. What word was there on 
behalf of the welfare of nations or the progress of human- 
ity, of European public opinion or of international arbitra- 
tion? They proposed to appropriate territory acquired 
by the might of the sword, their avowed intention being 
to fortify and strengthen themselves against a certain 
reaction of hatred and revenge. Comparing the results 
of two systems of government, as they stand before us, 
one is at least justified in not throwing the whole con- 
demnation on the popular side. 

1 W. H. Russell, " My Diary in the Last Great War." 



CHAPTER XIV 

FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 

TN a study of the future prospects of popular govern- 
-*- ment there cannot possibly be a more interesting ele- 
ment than that of the Third Republic of France. It turns, 
as the whole history of the country has done since 1789, 
and as that of the United States has done during the same 
period, upon the relations of the executive and the legis- 
lature. No doubt France is under a highly centralized 
government, all administration radiating from Paris, and 
with almost no local political life ; while the especial char- 
acteristic of the United States consists in the limited 
functions of the federal government and the intense ac- 
tivity of the numerous local organizations. The differ- 
ence is not less great in the character of the two peoples, 
the lower education and the degree of ignorance in that of 
France, their lack of initiative, their submissiveness to 
authority and desire to be governed, their subjection to 
the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church varied only 
by violent revolt ; as compared with the higher intelli- 
gence, the individuality and self-reliance, and the mental 
independence of the people of the United States. 1 But 

1 We must again point out, however, that these differences are less the 
result of racial qualities than of historical conditions. " Europe has been 
in continued war for three hundred years. There is no people in this state 
of things which has not need of dictatorship and therefore of destroying 
those smaller powers and local liberties, so dear to Tocqueville, which from 
within are liberties and from without are weaknesses. ... In a Europe 
at war there can be only despotisms, pure and simple, or centralized and 
authoritative democracies, and if one resembles the other the conditions 
show that nothing is more natural. And is it not evident that the Euro- 

287 



288 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

throughout these differences there stands out the same 
problem of creating an executive strong enough to gov- 
ern, but restrained by responsibility constantly enforced 
through the legislature. 

What popular government, such as it was, had already 
accomplished in this century in France, apparently aban- 
doned to a blind conflict of force, was shown in the negotia- 
tions for peace. When at one in the morning of January 
29, 1871, Jules Favre brought back from Versailles to his 
colleagues in Paris the final agreement for an armistice, 
the first thing to be done was, in concert with the railway 
directors, to provide for feeding Paris. But the Council 
would not separate before completing the arrangements 
for summoning an Assembly. Both time and authority 
were wanting for preparing an electoral law. That of 
March 15, 1849, was substantially adopted, the last elec- 
toral law of the Republic and which may be thus summed 
up : Vote upon general ticket by cantons, the electors 
being twenty-one, the elected twenty-five, years of age, 
including all Frenchmen not under sentence of the law. 

The elections were fixed for the 8th of February and 
the meeting of the Assembly at Bordeaux for the 12th, 
justifying Prince Bismarck's exclamation when Favre 
announced the decision to him that it was impossible. 
More than a third of the departments were occupied by 
the enemy and administered by German prefects. The 
conduct of the elections had to be intrusted to the local 

pean nation — dear to Tocqueville — which has remained most decentral- 
ized and most aristocratic, and which can even permit itself a half and 
very honorable attempt at liberal federation, is the nation which, at an- 
chor in the middle of the seas, has less to fear than any other from the 
perpetual war which weighs either as a threat or in reality on all Europe ? 
— Emile Faguet, "Essay on De Tocqueville," Bevue des Deux Mondes, 
February 1, 1894. 

iThe most interesting question of the future is whether the development 
of local institutions and of popular government will do anything to mod- 
ify this state of war. 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 289 

officials under the favor of the conqueror. The other de- 
partments were in relations only with Gambetta, who was 
bitterly opposed to the peace and still more to the can- 
didacy of the Bonapartists. The railroads were in a 
deplorable condition, the tracks torn up, the road-beds 
encumbered, the bridges broken, the material scattered 
and dispersed. Six long months of war had disorganized 
the municipal administrations ; the voting lists had not 
been corrected, in many cases they had been lost ; the em- 
ployees were not at their posts. There had to be done in 
a week under such conditions that which in ordinary 
times takes several months. The elections having taken 
place it was necessary within four days to count the votes, 
proclaim the results, and forward the certificates to Bor- 
deaux. The new deputies, to arrive in time, had to start 
almost within an hour of their election, especially as 
many of them finding no direct route would be obliged 
to make long detours ; others would learn in the prisons 
of Germany at the same time of their candidature and 
their election. And as if to render the complication 
wholly inextricable a conflict arose between the govern- 
ment in Paris and the delegation at Bordeaux on the 
question of excluding from the Assembly at Bordeaux the 
partisans of the Empire. The tact and skill with which 
that conflict was averted and all Frenchmen appealed to 
on the same footing call for unqualified admiration. 

On the 12th of February, at three o'clock in the af- 
ternoon, the deputies came together in the green room 
of the Grand Theatre at Bordeaux, and without any 
delay for a consideration of circumstances declared the 
Assembly constituted. The next day began the verifica- 
tion of powers, and when on the 16th the Assembly pro- 
ceeded to elect the permanent officers there were no less 
than 533 voters. Neither the Paris government nor the 
Bordeaux delegates had thought of defining the powers of 



290 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the Assembly or of fixing a term of its duration. It was 
evident that as the outcome of universal suffrage it pos- 
sessed absolute and sovereign power, and that from the 
moment of its meeting its authority was sole and supreme 
in France. The largest fraction consisted of the Right 
Centre or constitutional monarchists, and it contained 
the most men of high ability and character. Next came 
the Republicans, nearly as numerous, then the Legiti- 
mists, and lastly the Bonapartists, only thirty-six in 
number. 

If the Right Centre had voted together they would 
have held the balance of power, and might have repeated 
the experiment of 1830. In their division lay the safety 
of the Republic. Among them was a group of one hun- 
dred clear-headed men, conservative on the one hand and 
attached to liberty on the other. The Republic inspired 
them with distrust, which in some cases at that time 
reached the height of aversion. But they were per- 
suaded that they would have to choose between the Re- 
public and the Empire. They rejected legitimacy as 
chimerical and dictatorship as odious ; they preferred a 
liberal monarchy to a moderate republic, but they did not 
think it would be right to bring about a revolution simply 
that they might make the presidency of the Republic hered- 
itary. The head of this party and the inspirer of its prin- 
ciples was M. Thiers. His personal history, whether as a 
statesman or in his motives of action, had not been wholly 
satisfactory ; but his long connection with the govern- 
ment, his attitude of opposition to the Empire from the 
time of his election for Paris in 1863, his protest against 
the war, his journeying about Europe in search of aid for 
his country, had made him the most prominent man in 
France. He had not only been elected in twenty-six 
different places but had obtained important minorities 
in others, and the total number of votes for him exceeded 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 291 

two millions. To him all eyes were turned, and when at 
the session of February 16 it was proposed by a com- 
mittee that he should be appointed chief of the executive 
power of the French Republic, the result without a ballot 
was reported as follows by the Journal Officiel: "The 
proposition was put to the vote and adopted almost 
unanimously." In anticipation of the event and that no 
time might be lost M. Thiers had set about forming his 
cabinet, and the Assembly appointed fifteen commissioners 
to assist in the work of making peace. 

On the 1st of March took place the discussion as to 
ratifying the preliminaries of peace. It was short, occu- 
pying but one sitting, but it was very passionate. In 
spite of the tremendous severity of the terms, of the 
bitter protest of the followers of Gambetta, of the pathetic 
and impassioned appeal of the deputies from Alsace and 
Lorraine, the facts of the situation were inexorable. 
After an eloquent address from Thiers demanding im- 
mediate action, the Assembly voted for peace by 548 
against 107. On the 10th of March it held the last of 
seventeen sessions and adjourned to meet at Versailles on 
the 27th. 

This is not the place to follow the operations by which 
the indemnity was paid, order and prosperity restored, 
and the Germans negotiated out of the country two years 
sooner than was originally contemplated. Frederick the 
Great of Prussia received that appellation mainly on 
account of his constancy of purpose, his resource and 
recovery under disastrous defeat. If the title could be 
transferred to a nation and diverted from its traditional 
application to success in war, never did the French peo- 
ple, hardly ever did any people, deserve it better than in 
those years 1871-73. 

And how was the work accomplished ? By placing the 
full powers of government in the hands of the chief 



292 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

executive head, M. Thiers. 1 In all cases in history where 
a nation has been lifted out of almost desperate com- 
plications, it has been always under the leadership of one 
man. Take the dawn of modern civilization in Europe 
under Charlemagne. There is William the Silent in 
Holland, William Pitt in England, Richelieu and Napo- 
leon in France, Stein and Bismarck in Germany, Cavour 
in Italy, Washington and Lincoln in the United States. 
A mountain of opprobrium has been heaped upon the 
term plSbiscite. In fact, there have been, in Europe at 
least, but two instances of what is meant by that word, 
that is, the election or indorsement of a single man by 
universal suffrage. And in neither case of the Bonapartes 
was the evil in the vote itself. It was in the crime and 
treachery by which these men overthrew the regular gov- 
ernment, suppressed all opposition by military force, and 
then through servile officials stimulated the people to 
support them by an appeal to fear and the experience of 
civil war. In fact, the training which these votes gave 
to the people in the exercise of universal suffrage fur- 
nished in its effect upon the history of the country almost 

1 This ancient minister of Louis Philippe, who had grown old in the 
details of politics, who in 1849, guiding the conservative forces to the 
assault of the Republic, in trying to bring back the king by force of 
intrigue had brought back the Empire, — this little bourgeois, vain and 
vulgar, who had never commanded respect, suddenly found in the im- 
mensity of the danger and the sincerity of his patriotism the energy of 
civic heroism and the clairvoyance of genius. At an age when men think 
only of their final repose he was hoisted into power in the collapse of 
France, with Paris in the hands of insurrection, the Germans encamped 
in a third of the country, five milliards to pay, the army and the finances 
to be renewed, furious parties to be held in leash, the preparation for the 
morrow to be made in the whirlwind of the present, and all this in the 
face of a hostile Chamber which harasses him every day, dragged to 
the tribune as one suspected or accused because he is more faithful to the 
country than to the three pretenders who are quarrelling for the prize. 
M. Thiers was equal to all these tasks, and raised with his old man's 
hands a social fabric which was falling to pieces. — James Darmesteter, 
11 Internal War and Peace, 1871-93," Bevue de Paris, February 15. 1894. 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 293 

an offset to the evils which they caused. The election of 
Thiers, almost equivalent to a plebiscite, showed what 
immense progress had been made. Instead of a soldier, 
basing his rule upon military force and leaving to the 
people the only choice between such rule and civil war, 
here was a simple citizen relying for his power only upon 
his eloquence and the conviction of his sincerity and his 
patriotism, confessing from the outset that he held power 
only by the will of the Assembly and was ready to re- 
linquish it at any moment at their bidding. 

Suppose that, in the place of this man, the work had 
been intrusted to a committee of the Assembly selected 
by the jealous manoeuvring of the different parties and 
factions, and animated less by a single desire for the 
welfare of France than for the advantage and credit of 
the particular group which each represented. What, in 
the face of Bismarck and Von Moltke, and when the popu- 
lar masses in the great cities were hesitating between the 
Commune of Paris and the Assembly at Versailles, would 
have been the result for France ? 

Why is it necessary that a nation should wait for the 
supreme agony of defeat in war before resorting to this 
simple and effective means of defence? Why should it 
not in the ordinary complications of politics, in the devel- 
opments such as in the United States amid outward peace 
and prosperity are filling men's minds with anxiety for 
the future, instead of desperate appeals to the masses to 
exert a blind and impotent energy for themselves, employ 
a single pilot, in whose ability, integrity, and disinterest- 
edness it has acquired faith from experience, to guide it 
into safer waters ? Certainly, it is not the people who are 
at fault. They have a fund of enthusiasm always await- 
ing an appeal on behalf of personal character. It is the 
few, the politicians, who wish for place and the power and 
importance it gives without responsibility ; who identify 



294 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the welfare of the country with their own personal and 
part}' advantage ; who are jealous of the prominence and 
the credit of a single man, however indispensable he may 
be to the welfare of the people ; and who regard democ- 
racy, instead of an organization of government for the 
benefit of and in accordance with the wishes of the whole 
people, as consisting in the abandonment of that govern- 
ment to impersonal committees made up by party intrigue 
and acting out of sight of, and with very little reference 
to, the people themselves. 

We have now to trace the jealous encroachment of the 
Assembly upon the power which they had themselves 
granted, and the process by which, while the country was 
steadily gaining in political sense and self-control, the 
anarchy and the factions in the legislature have come to 
make government almost impossible. 

When the Assembly first met there was a kind of gen- 
eral agreement, which came to be known as the " Pact of 
Bordeaux," that all questions as to the future constitution 
of government should be postponed till the final conclusion 
of peace, and it was this which secured the cordial conces- 
sion of power to Thiers. He was chosen as the executive 
head of the French Republic with the understanding that 
the term was provisional and non-committal as to the 
future. But, while he -was accepted as the one man 
demanded by the situation, all parties regarded him with 
more or less of distrust. The Left knew that he had been 
a faithful adherent of the monarchy, and the groups of 
the Right were as suspicious of him as of each other. 
The majority of the Assembly was undoubtedly monarch- 
ist, but divided into Legitimists, Orletmists, and Bona- 
partists. As M. Thiers said, there was but one throne, 
and three persons wanted to sit on it. He himself under- 
took the government with a fixed resolution, from which 
lie never wavered, " not to be a party man, to think only 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 295 

of France," and, as he himself put it, " of the health of 
France." It was plain enough that if he succeeded in 
reconstituting the army, the administration, and the 
finances under a republican government, these great 
results would confirm and consolidate the Republic. He 
did not work with a view to this result, and he said so ; 
but this result did not alarm him, and so he said also. 1 

The hostility of the majority, under these circumstances, 
showed itself in the form which it always takes, a conflict 
between legislative and executive power. The Assembly 
regarded itself as not simply clothed with legislative 
but also with constituent power, and, without proclaim- 
ing or confessing this to itself, it desired to exercise also 
executive power. But against this Thiers was resolute. 
He would say, " I am but your delegate, I govern by your 
authority and under your eyes ; " but his determina- 
tion was to govern alone till he should be dismissed. 
The Chamber, on the contrary, desired a share in every- 
thing ; every day questions were asked in the House, now 
about the negotiations, now about the war, and it com- 
plained if disclosures were withheld which would have 
laid all the national secrets open to the whole world. 
Committees were appointed to assist the government, or, 
in other words, to observe it and to act in the place of 
it had they been able. Thiers, in the very midst of his 
military operations, or of his struggles with the generals 
of the army, was summoned to give information. The 
Right permitted themselves to be influenced by a desire 
to get authority into their own hands, to interfere in 
administrative details, and to diminish day by day the 
freedom of action and the power of the President which 
they ultimately proposed to overthrow. 2 

i Jules Simon, "The Government of M. Thiers," Vol. II., Chap. IX., 
pp. 308, 231, from which account the first part of this chapter is mainly 
taken. 2 Ibid., p. 244. 



296 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The Assembly demanded each day that an account 
should be rendered at the tribune of all that took place 
in Paris or in the army ; it wished to be informed before- 
hand of all that the government intended to do. Not 
being able to compel Thiers to expose publicly his plans 
and certain details of the situation, it appointed a com- 
mittee of fifteen of its members to confer with the gov- 
ernment. Several members of the committee persuaded 
themselves that they were introduced into the Cabinet 
by the Chamber. The committee was not content with 
knowing, it wanted to control. It obliged Thiers to hold 
continual conferences. 'We ought to meet every day. 
If you cannot come to the committee, the committee will 
come to the Hotel de la Prefecture.' 2 

One point of discussion bears a singular resemblance to 
the action of the first Congress of the United States in 
refusing to allow Alexander Hamilton to make an oral 
exposition of the condition of the finances, and thus estab- 
lishing the exclusion of the executive branch from any 
share in the debates upon legislation, which exists to this 
day. It was at the end of August, 1871. 

There still remained a question which Thiers had much at heart, 
and with regard to which he was indeed intractable. Could he inter- 
fere as in time past in parliamentary debates ? The committee pro- 
posed to forbid his entrance into Parliament. " But we would ask," 
said M. Vitet in his report, " if through respect for principles we were 
to go so far as to propose to France that she shall decree that hence- 
forth her incomparable orator shall be heard no more and shall speak 
only by message, whether France would not be tempted to laugh in 
our faces, and I will not say what she would think of us ! " M. de 
Lavergne proposed that at least the President of the Republic should 
inform the President of the Assembly of his intention to take part in 
the debate. The question was not settled till the following December, 
and then by this compromise : that M. Thiers should henceforth con- 
sent to speak only after certain formalities. He was to give notice of 
his intention the day before ; if he should happen to want to speak 

1 Jules Simon, op. cit., p. 248. 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 297 

on the same day a vote would be necessary to empower him to do so. 
On the day fixed he was to come to the Chamber, — for he was not to 
have admission on ordinary occasions, — and then make his speech 
and withdraw. The Chamber would also adjourn. He was not to 
be answered till the next day. Thus he might address them, but he 
could not debate. In exchange they conferred on him two important 
rights : that of retarding for a few days the promulgation of laws, and 
of demanding, that is to say of exacting, by a message a fresh delibera- 
tion ; 1 in other words, a limited veto. 

It is to be observed that all this difficulty came from 
the conservative Right. The Left, as they saw Thiers 
inclining more and more to the Republic, rallied to his 
support. 

A speaker belonging to the Right was much astonished to see the 
Left bent on strengthening the government. The Left replied, and 
with reason, that those who are most liberal desire a strong govern- 
ment. The important thing is rightly to define the limits of authority 
and of liberty. The province of the State ought to be restricted 
within what is necessary, but while remaining within these just 
limits authority must be very strong ; it must be so even for the sake 
of liberty. 2 

The final blow came on the 24th of May, 1873. It 
seemed as if a government which, after two years of 
negotiation, had arranged for the final payment of the 
heavy indemnity and the final evacuation of France by 
the enemy, might have been allowed the three months 
more of existence which were wanting to witness this 
termination. But the Right could restrain itself no 
longer. A resolution expressing regret that recent minis- 
terial changes " do not furnish the security which conser- 
vative interests have a right to expect" was carried by 
360 votes to 344. At eight o'clock of the same evening 
the resignation of Thiers was received, and at ten o'clock 
Marshal MacMahon was elected President in his stead. 
Of 721 members present only 391 votes were cast, of 
which the marshal had 390. 

* Ibid., p. 270. 2 /foU,p. 323. 



298 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

On the same evening, also, an address was written on 
the benches of the Assembly and signed by 126 deputies 
of the Left, among whom were Peyrat, Gambetta, Louis 
Blanc, Edgar Quinet, and Pelletan. It ran thus : — 

Citizens : In the position in which France is placed by the pres- 
ent political crisis, it is of the utmost importance that order should 
not be disturbed. 

We entreat you to avoid everything that could have a tendency 
to increase the public excitement. 

Never was the calmness of strength more necessary. Remain 
quiet. The safety of France and the Republic is at stake. 

The newspapers of the party, both in Paris and the provinces, pub- 
lished this proclamation and gave it their adhesion. A unanimous 
resolution to win by calmness, patience, order, and discipline had hold 
of all minds. To this quiet and discipline are owing all the votes 
gained in Parliament for the Republic as well as the striking electoral 
successes of the last few years. The Republican party, to the great 
surprise and deep regret of its enemies, has at last learned the way to 
conquer ; and it employs it. 1 

For four months in the summer of 1873 the Assembly 
was not in session, but on November 19, by a vote of 378 
to 310, it made MacMahon President for seven years, with 
full authority over the civil service (with all which that 
means in France) and the army, with no provision for 
impeachment and nothing to prevent his declaring France 
in a state of siege, but without a veto. All the conditions 
were favorable to a military dictatorship. It was said at 
the time that the Royalists fully expected the marshal to 
play the part of General Monk in the restoration of Charles 
II. Whether he would have done so may be doubted, but 
the scheme was defeated by the refusal of the Count de 
Chambord to accept the crown upon any but the impos- 
sible terms of the old rSgime ; and next by the disagree- 
ments of the Orleanists and the Bonapartists. No little 
credit is, however, due to the Republicans, in that they 

1 Jules Simon, op. eft., p. 418. 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 299 

avoided precipitating the evil by forcible resistance to the 
dangerous situation. The incidental elections in Septem- 
ber, 1873, which gave marked Republican results even in 
the most conservative parts of the country, showed which 
way the feeling was tending. 

It had become evident that some steps would have to be 
taken as to a definite form of government in the future, and 
much as the majority of the Assembly disliked the estab- 
lishment of a republic it felt that its own life must come 
to an end, and it disliked still more to leave the decision to 
a future body, which was almost sure to be of opposite 
views. After eighteen months of hesitation it passed 
the constitutional laws of February to November, 1875. 
These did not form, it must be observed, a constitution 
with a declaration or a basis of principles. They merely 
made provision for the organization of the public powers, 
and having done so much the Assembly which had existed 
more than four years dissolved itself and left the country 
to the uncertainties of a general election. 

The elections, which took place in the beginning of 1876, 
gave to the Liberals a majority of 50 in the Senate and 
330 members out of 530 in the Chamber. M. Buffet, the 
conservative Minister of the Interior, had exerted all the 
powers of his office but the people had voted him down 
distinctly. The year was spent in manoeuvring for posi- 
tion. Towards the close of it a London journal remarked: 

It is curious and interesting to note by what a gradual process the 
French have been educated to reach that most important point of true 
political freedom, in which the violent and naked strife of one hostile 
principle against another is exchanged for a discussion of practical 
ends which can be more or less pursued in common by men who hold 
different principles. 1 

The lapse of twenty years has only added increased 
force to these words. 

1 Spectator, November 25, 1876. 



300 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

President MacMahon had so far yielded to the Liberal 
majority as to select first M. Dufaure and then M. Jules 
Simon as his chief minister, but he chafed under such 
restraint. In the spring of 1877 he called M. Simon to 
account for some details of administration and on the 
16th of May the latter sent in his resignation. Gambetta 
had prepared a resolution "that the confidence of the 
majority can only be accorded to a cabinet free in its 
action and resolved to govern according to republican 
principles, which alone can guarantee order and prosper- 
ity at home and peace abroad." The Chamber accepted 
this by a vote of 363 to 154. 

It was after he had heard of this vote that the President in open 
defiance of it appointed a ministry in which M. de Broglie was 
Premier and Minister of Justice, and M. de Fourtou, whose very name 
signified interference with the elections, was Minister of the Interior ; 
that is, an avowed ministry of combat, a ministry as hostile to a 
republic even of the iron-clad kind as to responsible government of 
any sort. 1 

The Chamber becoming very restless under this the 
President sent a message of dissolution, which, under 
the requirement of the constitution, was approved by the 
Senate, 150 to 130. While general anxiety weighed upon 
the country the elections took place on October 14, and 
gave by the first returns 325 Republicans to 208 Conserva- 
tives. During the year 1878 the President carried on the 
government with a ministry of affairs selected wholly out- 
side of the Assembly. But that body became impatient, 
demanded the dismissal from the army of certain obnoxious 
generals, and threatened to impeach the De Broglie minis- 
try. The marshal met this pressure by resignation, which 
he sent in on the 30th of January, 1879 ; and by the action 
of the two houses in convention was immediately re- 
placed by M. Grevy with 563 votes against 99 for General 

1 Spectator, May 19. 1877. 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 301 

Chanzy. Honor and patriotism had triumphed with the 
old marshal over class prejudices, and nothing in his long 
public career became him like its close. After calling 
upon his successor he withdrew to pass the remaining 
fourteen years of his life in dignified retirement in the 
country, leaving behind him a very precious example and 
precedent for France. 

With Grevy as President and Gambetta two years later 
becoming prime minister the Republic had fully triumphed. 
The use which it has made of its success now demands 
attention. We will leave the story to a writer who 
grasps the situation without drawing from it the conclu- 
sions which we are seeking to enforce. 1 

The bad policy of the Monarchists had diminished the popularity 
which they had earned during the war, the good policy of the Republi- 
cans effaced little by little the memories of violence and incapacity 
which weighed upon the national defence. 

With the partial elections of 1871 began a movement in the country 
which was no longer to be checked. It became so strong that after 
four years of contest and before its dissolution the National Assembly 
consecrated by a constitution the legitimacy of the Republic. In 1876 
universal suffrage confirmed this vote by peopling the new Chamber 
with Republican deputies. There still remained a monarchical presi- 
dent and assembly, but when on the 16th of May a coup de tete which 
resulted in a coup d'etat put the new system in question the will 
of the country turned into a violent passion, reestablished the 363 in 
their seats, revised in 1879 the majority of the Senate, and some days 
later carried away Marshal MacMahon (p. 4). 

Six more years have passed away. Far from peace being made 
among the political factions, there are everywhere threats, rage, and 
hatred. If concord and faith still survive it is among the adversaries 
of the Republic ; the longer it lasts the more numerous they become ; 
the more it acts the more confident they become. The friends of the 
system now rely only upon the impotence of its enemies to destroy it, 
while its enemies count upon the impotence of its partisans to keep it 
alive, and among these partisans more than one fears that the enemy 
speaks the truth. The horn of disenchantment has sounded which 
is followed so quickly by that of despair ; sad hour in which the most 
faithful speak by their anxiety, the most well-wishing by their silence, 

1 Etienne Lamy, "La Republique en 1883." 



302 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

and in which the most sagacious begin to separate their private careers 
from that of the public and quietly prepare themselves for the changes 
which they foresee. In the whole country we seek vainly for the ar- 
dent sympathy which carried the Republic into power. Of the vanished 
attachment there does not remain even an irritation in which it might 
still live. There is something more inexorable than wrath and that 
is indifference. That of the country does not see anything worthy of 
shaking itself off. 

More than twice six years have elapsed since this was 
written and the Republic stands more firmly than it did 
then. Through all the crises, the resignation of President 
Grevy, the episode of General Boulanger, the assassina- 
tion of President Carnot, the Panama scandal, all the 
strikes and Socialist agitation, the country has remained 
calm and unmoved. Paris seems to have lost its revolu- 
tionary power. The elections of September, 1893, gave 
311 Moderate Republicans, 122 Radicals, 49 Socialists, 
35 Rallies, or Conservatives who had decided to accept 
the Republic, and 58 Reactionaries ; while in the sena- 
torial elections of January, 1894, a few Monarchists were 
returned amid a general defeat of the Anti-Constitution- 
alists. French writers seem to agree that the country 
wants peaceful and economical government and looks 
hopefully to the Republic to accomplish these results. 
We return to 1883. 

There had been a party capable of feigning wisdom to arrive at 
power. When it gets there it is at an end of its virtue. Mildness 
and moderation have passed, and hatred and avidity, sharpened by 
long fasting, are satisfied by a formula held in abeyance, but pro- 
claimed with the assumption of power. Everything in France belongs 
to the State, and the State to the Republic, by which is meant the 
Republicans. For them only all the offices, all influence. For them 
the exclusive occupation, not only of political posts, which every vic- 
tor can legitimately claim, but situations from which politics must 
be excluded under penalty of corrupting them. To administer the 
finances it is no longer sufficient to be skilful and honest, for render- 
ing justice to know and love the law, for commanding troops to have 
the reputation of a brave chief, and the confidence of the soldiers ; 
one must be besides, one must be above all, a Republican. The 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 303 

Republic is a battle-field where the conquerors murder the wounded 
and despoil the dead. 

In a country where the prerogatives of the State are increased 
beyond measure, as soon as its impartiality fails to be complete, the 
existence of all is troubled ; when the holders of power exercise their 
innumerable functions in a spirit of party, there are no longer citi- 
zens, but favorites and victims of public power. A former minister 
lately showed that this inequality appears even in taxation. While 
pointing out an abnormal diminution of indirect revenue he revealed 
the cause of it, the difficulty for the agents of the treasury in acting 
against whoever belongs to the dominant party, and, when they prose- 
cute fraud, in the complicity of political influence which assures the 
pardon of the guilty. Certain men were living in retirement, study, 
and prayer. The government proves no crime against them, does not 
even accuse them, it drives them out. Others, banded against their 
own country after having spread fire and sword through Paris, con- 
victed of all sorts of crime, had been exiled from their country by the 
laws ; the government recalls them, and not merely admits them to 
liberty and France, but restores them to citizenship, to voting in 
Paris equally with those who saved it from their hands. 

When a number of men with differing ideas undertake to govern 
together, one condition is necessary. Everything must be excluded 
from the programme which is not accepted by all, and in the subjects 
brought forward by common agreement, innovation must be stopped 
at the point at which the will stops of those who want the least 
change. The supporters of M. Thiers during seven years were of 
nervous temperaments, but he made them all accept that policy which 
by the moderation of its demands and the patience of its hopes con- 
quered France itself. But with M. Thiers disappeared the only states- 
man who held vigor at the service of moderation, and he being dead 
his party seemed nothing more than a group of the faithful assembled 
to mourn for their lost chief and courage. All the authority was 
assumed by Gambetta. Now the policy of Gambetta was never to 
take sides among Republicans. He did not prepare to lean towards 
one group or another because he wished to govern them all. Then 
appeared a new solution of the difficulty. 1 Why should the Republi- 
cans be divided? That each might win success for his views. But 
the only views which deserve success are the views which the country 
professes. The real duty of public men is to put into practice the 
manifest wishes of the people. This duty is fitted to unite them, and 
they honor themselves in sacrificing their particular preferences to 
this common master, to serve him as he wishes. Certainly it was a 
sophism; as to the wishes of the country politicians may differ as 

1 Known by the name of " opportunism." 



804 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

much as with regard to their own, but the sophism borrowed from 
its author a specious authority. 

The union which he asked for became the desire of all. It failed 
only in one particular but which was sufficient to show the weakness 
of the whole scheme. He wanted to break up the old groups and to 
unite the Republicans in a single one, and nothing could be more 
logical. But the will of men is more easily subdued than their 
instincts, and the firmest resolves of harmony had left all the antipa- 
thies in full force. From those who ranked in the Left Centre to those 
who bordered on the Commune, all repelled as an insult being con- 
founded with the others. Resolved not to separate themselves in 
voting they did not carry their courage so far as to deliberate 
together. This sentiment remains invincible, and it is the constantly 
multiplying groups which protest against division among Republicans. 

Now this compact presented and accepted as an expedient was in 
reality a revolution in the hierarchy, in the very idea of political power. 
Under all systems and in all ages, a small number of men are fitted 
to govern. Politics is the art of discovering them and putting author- 
ity into their hands. Aristocracies think they can best prepare states- 
men by reserving public affairs for certain castes : in monarchies the 
choice of the prince is held to be the safest, in democracies the judg- 
ment of the people to be most infallible ; but never except in the 
two extreme schools in which superstition destroys the intelligence, 
whether of a republic or a monarchy, has it been pretended that politi- 
cal genius was embodied either in the king or the people. Public 
opinion is no more suited to create a policy than a masterpiece of the 
pen or the pencil. All that can be expected of it is the capacity for 
judging that which it would be unable to produce. As it did not 
need the genius of Raphael to admire Raphael, or of Shakespeare to 
admire Shakespeare, so it did not need the genius of Richelieu or 
Bonaparte to recognize that that which is beautiful, just, or wise 
satisfies the instinctive taste of public opinion for the truth. In 
democracies the people is too vast and too far off to have a personal 
knowledge of individuals, their origin and their qualities ; between 
the two there is but one point of connection, the spoken word. 

Public debates are the arena in which ideas are tested and the 
democracy judges because it is informed. To dissipate in men's minds 
the charm in which they are at first plunged by a voice which seems 
an echo of their desires; to make them appreciate the difference 
between that which seduces and that which persuades, the renewed 
and constant trials are not at all too much of debates which crush 
the most solid lies under the slow grinding of good sense. Then the 
splendor of triumphant truth designates for power those who have 
known how to defend it and have ended by imposing it. Then these 
legitimate possessors receive for recompense the mission of realizing 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 305 

in the name of their country the policy which they have made it 
understand. The trust implies the means of action. Authors of a 
policy, they are the most capable of knowing what is needed for the 
execution of their projects, and what instruments are fitted to serve 
them. The hope of success demands for them the free disposition of 
men and things. The limits which they have traced for themselves by 
their engagements, those which surround them in the watchfulness of 
the legislature, the possibility always open of taking from them every- 
thing with power, deprive their prerogative in advance of its greatest 
dangers. Moreover the inevitable abuses in the services which dis- 
pose of the budgets and the offices are less to be feared when a single 
responsible chief has the disposition of favors; he is himself con- 
strained by his interest to lose nothing of the forces at his disposal. 

It is this order created by the loyal struggle of doctrines which 
the Republican party has destroyed. The concord of those who do 
not think alike lives by their silence. As soon as the bargain was 
made, speech became an enemy. For the first time the ministers 
were without a programme and the deputies without debate. The 
tribune appeared to be only a dangerous temptation, and the greatest 
orators employed their eloquence only to persuade each other, in 
undertones, to keep silent. 

For every elected body there is a law of life, to be in accord with 
public opinion. And to do this there are only two ways, — to direct 
opinion or to obey it. By strangling their discords in silence the 
Republicans deprived themselves of all chance of forming in time a 
public intelligence upon the ruins of Utopias and follies, and by the 
conquest of truth incessantly renewed. They cut off from men of 
sense, of genius, if there were such, the means of revealing themselves ; 
they deprived the country in advance of those just, profound, and well- 
ordered ideas, which coming from the reason of oue and accepted by 
the reason of all insure the dignity of the government and prepare 
its success. They condemned themselves to follow, in place of these 
lights, the troubled and fugitive glimmer of a public opinion, itself 
without a guide, of the ignorance and passion of which they did not 
think of disputing the dictates. This policy took the direction of 
affairs from those who are fit for conducting it and handed it over to 
those who are incapable of doing so. Now the Republican party, kept 
outside of the Republic from 1871 to 1876, and twice threatened by 
the offensive attacks of the Monarchists with the destruction of the 
Republic itself, had remained an army in order of battle. For regu- 
lating the strategy of an opposition which wished to overturn those 
in power and might be led by the excess of that power to revolt, there 
were needed men resolved to brave the hostility of government, the 
rigor of magistrates, and even the redoubtable chances of a violent 
resistance. In every department, in every canton, in every commune, 



306 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the most energetic became the interpreters of their fellow-citizens to 
the leaders and exercised a double influence which they owed to their 
initiative, for in time of danger authority is born of courage. 

The gravity of the circumstances had seemed at certain times to 
demand even more, a solid force capable of bringing to bear at all 
times an impulse regulated by discipline, and perhaps to gather sud- 
denly material resistance at a given point against unexpected attack. 
To struggle against the government the Opposition needed officers 
and troops. It found them. The working societies had placed at 
its service in the large cities their masses always discontented and 
easily moved to action ; in the whole country two great societies, the 
educational league and freemasonry, had lent their burning activity 
and their secret force. A certain number of vigorous men and power- 
ful associations had formed in all this period the government of opin- 
ion. It was they who gave the legislators their seats. It was they 
who were going to dictate their policy. 

Ardor of temperament is not always joined to moderation of ideas. 
The volunteers who had thrown themselves into the struggle had 
been nearly all recruited among men extreme in opinion and in 
passion, and inclined to confound the one with the other. Many who 
were thought only enemies of royalty were in fact those of society 
itself. They announced that taste for immediate destruction and 
distant reform which is characteristic of demagogy ; most of them, 
moreover, having no business experience and therefore given to 
radical solutions, for the audacity of negation is always seductive 
to ignorance. In this social order which was under their ban their 
hatred pointed out the nearest victims. It was they who in the 
struggle had received the blows : whoever struck them, prefects, 
functionaries, judges, was to be struck in turn. These were the 
wishes which were heard in France and these were enforced upon the 
Assembly, the amnesty, the removal of officials, the war against 
the magistracy and finally against the Church and the religious 
societies. 

Not all those who had adhered to the Republican union foresaw 
this policy. But when the Moderates did perceive it, they were 
already involved. The electoral influences which their silence had 
rendered omnipotent would not have tolerated their independence; 
they had to move on. The voice of the extreme party seemed to 
them the voice of France; they were ashamed of their wisdom, and 
there were to be seen as accomplices of all faults men whose con- 
sciences and whose very names protested against their cowardice. 
Only the representatives of demagogic opinions were accomplices 
without being dupes. They alone ran no risk of being carried too far. 
They alone did not need debate which was their danger ; they alone 
could direct without noise a public opinion made by their committees 



xiv PRANCE— THE THIRD REPUBLIC 307 

and associations. Gambetta himself, apparently sovereign, was re- 
duced to serve this power, since he had need of remaining popular ; 
in his turn he was obliged to submit or to resign. 1 

But the facility which the inspirers of this policy found in accom- 
plishing this evil did not delude them into supposing that the country 
wished it. It was for themselves they carried on persecutions as well 
as reprisals; and they did homage to France in seeking to retain by 
other benefits a people whom injustice was not sufficient to win. The 
people, like individuals, is made up of mind and matter, and as it lives 
by ideas it lives also by interests. The less a government represents 
the one, the more it has to serve the others. It was resolved to con- 
quer France by material advantage. It is not an easy task to develop 
wealth and improve the conditions of existence. Too many subjects 
merit consideration and to really serve the people a selection must be 
made. But to select would be to create discontent. The object was 
to satisfy everybody. 

Now how many in a nation know what is advantageous to all and 
ignore that which they think is advantageous to themselves? The 
less the citizens are versed in public affairs the less they are able to 
understand that the satisfaction of each is the ruin of all; the more 
obscure the intelligence the greater the appetite. To satisfy a people 
without enlightening it one must promise it, promise it again, and 
promise it always. The grand scheme was the railroads. It seemed 
to be inspired by the general interest. It was the triumph of private 
interests. It was not a question of tracing necessary lines, of calcu- 
lating their production, of completing a network in its weak points, 
of frustrating by short cuts the diversions of traffic attempted to the 
detriment of France by foreign companies. The question was to dis- 
tribute the iron way through all the arrondissements and through all 
the cantons. The map was drawn up by the councils general and the 
deputies. The expense estimated at first at four milliards reached 
nine, and the whole was voted in a few days by assemblies in which 
each one gave without reckoning in order to receive in the same way. 
The regions already so well provided that even the eye of a legislator 
could not discover a place for a new road would protest against injus- 
tice. It is met by improving their canals, "by according, without dis- 
tinction to the coast, cities, quays, docks, the hope of becoming great 
ports. That does not exclude the spreading at the same time of bar- 
racks and schools over the whole territory. There is enough money 
for all and to apply everywhere. 

Thus far satisfaction had been given by collective benefits only to 
the departments and the communes, abstract entities and little capable 

1 Referring to his famous apothegm relating to Marshal MacMahon, 
" II faut se soumettre ou se de"mettre." 



308 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

of gratitude. What was wanted was to reach individuals. The Re- 
public must manifest itself to each of its partisans by some personal 
favor. The first and easiest is to avert from them the rigor of admin- 
istration or of the laws. That is why, from the members of the 
Commune to the smallest delinquent, friends are not prosecuted, or if 
prosecuted, the penalty is light, and even if light is not enforced. 
But the second, the real favor, is to give to friends a claim on the 
treasury. That is the reason why the question of persons in public 
office acquires a sudden importance; why, the vacancies not being 
equal to the wants, officials are constantly removed ; why, the places 
being still inadequate, new ones are every day added to the old. 

Who disposes of salaries and favors? The administration. It is 
this, then, which the candidates bind by their promises, and to keep 
them they must rule the administration. No sooner do they become 
deputies, indeed, than their first care is to absorb all the power in 
the district for which they are elected. Not only the prefects and the 
political agents but the officials of all classes no longer belong to the 
State. The State appoints them, but the deputy names them. To 
arm the deputy against the rivalries which menace him it is necessary 
that the officials, whose fortunes are bound up with his, should re- 
serve all places and advantages for the proteges of their protector. 
But these agents can do little ; their part is limited to preparing the 
solution of important affairs. These are decided in the ministries. 
It is then the ministries to whom the deputies are indebted for being 
loved or feared but obeyed. 

What new cares are thus brought into the life of a public man ! 
Every morning solicitations awaken him, letters and interviews at- 
tack him with every form of demand. By the importance of the 
petitioner is instantly measured the legitimacy of each claim and the 
urgency of satisfying it. But that is not saying that those of less im- 
portance are allowed to be forgotten ; he who depends upon everybody 
must not offend anybody, and it must be remembered that the small 
ones are also the most numerous. This debt which every day adds to 
the days past becomes the claim of the deputy upon the State ; to en- 
force it, as soon as the doors of the public administrations are opened, 
he penetrates, and often has to go through them all. Everywhere he 
must contrive means of information, find out who is accessible, by 
what means, at what hours, adapt himself to those of whom he has 
need, and above all, take care that they have need of him. The 
impossibilities which are set up against him are, in his eyes, only 
refusals ; refusals are only postponements, postponements only hopes ; 
when he insists he is defending his own interest; when the adminis- 
tration resists, it is defending only the interest of the public ; he feels 
his superiority. 

The deputy who hopes to be equal to such a work must show him- 



xiv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 309 

self more devoted to the work of the ministries than to that of the 
Chamber. The sessions are the only moments left to the employees 
for their work or to the deputy for his repose. It is rare that some 
conflict of ambition, more rare that some orator capable of giving 
voice to the dominant passions, gives a passing interest to the debates 
of the tribune. Only the Opposition brings some interruption to such 
well-regulated order, and it sometimes happens that it is heard by 
tolerance and to prove what argument is worth against a majority. 
But generally it is not necessary to hear that which one is resolved to 
vote. The hall is deserted for the lobbies, the only refuge where one 
can rest and hear the news or make it. But even then the yoke 
is heavy. Officials have to be informed of what is demanded, mayors 
and citizens of what is done. The deputy must write to maintain 
zeal, to preach patience, write to show the difficulty of obtaining suc- 
cess only the day before he writes to announce it. And while business 
piles up and budgets increase the deputy writes even in the hall of 
sessions, where he can raise in voting a hand armed with his pen, and 
fulfil a double task which the closure interrupts but does not finish. 

And if the deputies direct the administration, what share is left to 
the ministers? Just that which the deputies have no time to attend 
to : the general conduct of business at home or abroad. They govern 
without the Parliament, which is too much occupied to think of inter- 
posing an obstacle or hardly even a question. But let them not imagine 
that they can be masters in their own departments ; can be sure of the 
services of an indispensable assistant if his name sounds badly in the 
ears of the deputies ; can dispense with officials useless or unsafe but 
strong in respect of political support ; can recompense their subordi- 
nates by appreciating their merit; can give them instructions for 
serving solely the welfare of the State. Two ministers have tried it 
of late years, but with these exceptions all have accepted the situation 
without a struggle. And those only who did not struggle were right. 
A cabinet which should assume to take away from the deputies the 
disposition of places and the distribution of favors would take away 
their electoral strength. Their fortune which floats upon these favors 
would be wrecked if the stream ceased to flow. To tolerate the resist- 
ance of a cabinet would be to ruin themselves, and they would be 
compelled for their own lives to sentence it to death. Thanks to these 
new manners the grand virtue of politics is docility. Universal 
suffrage is the master ; the function of the deputies is to hear what it 
wants and to execute that without delay, for which purpose they con- 
fide the grand affairs of State to men capable of aiding them, and in 
this hierarchy of submission the ministers are placed at the summit 
for the purpose of obeying everybody. 

Thus is explained the decline of personality in public life. Men 
of moral value have disappeared first. Some retire in disgust from a 



310 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

scene in which they could find no place, others broken without yield- 
ing, but all condemned for unyielding virtue. Men of intellectual 
capacity next fall under suspicion. The suppleness of the unscrupu- 
lous does not satisfy the faction which directs the politics of to-day; 
it only feels easy in the presence of stupidity, and at each electoral 
movement it points out to the people favorites made after its own 
heart. And this mediocrity in those who govern explains in its turn 
the miserable quality of legislative work, the poverty of public debate, 
the demoralization of the public service, the inertia of our external 
policy, the disorder of our finances, and, in the face of all these evils, 
our equal incapacity to foresee and to amend. 

For if the nations make governments after their image, it is still 
more true that governments give to the people their virtues in the long 
run, and their vices with a terrible promptitude. Is it supposed that 
this people, if it reads impotence or servility on the forehead of its 
chiefs, will preserve intact its respect for authority? And meanwhile 
will it remain inaccessible to the errors, to the abasement of those 
whom it despises ? How should the public market of places and favors 
spread temptations everywhere without giving to a country, so greedy 
of public office, the mania for living at the expense of the State ? How 
can the caprice of fortunes which nothing justifies and the scandals 
of those which everything condemns fail to turn aside the modest 
labor and the conscientious efforts, upon which are raised with such 
slowness the success of honest people ? When the struggles of ambi- 
tion seem like the fever and the risks of gambling, when intrigue, 
treachery, backbiting, all the lowest vices lead to the highest office, 
how can there fail to be shaken, even in the smallest citizens, the in- 
dependence, the sincerity, the moderation, everything which makes 
the moral grandeur of a people ? 

Such is the fecundity of error. All these results are bound up with 
and flow from one cause, the union of the Republican party. 1 

The value of this extract consists in showing the process 
which is involved in the absorption of government by a 
legislature, working through a majority held together 
solely by the cement of party discipline and wholly free 
from executive guidance and control. Allowing for the 
difference of times and manners it is precisely the process 
which took place after the first French Revolution, and 
we shall find it developed in like manner under different 
circumstances in the United States. The passage is in- 

i " La Republique en 1883." 






xiv FRANCE— THE THIRD REPUBLIC 311 

serted at length also as confirming the proposition which 
it is the chief object of this work to prove, that the real 
evil is not in universal suffrage but in the organization of 
government and that it is to be met by the establishment 
of a strong and independent executive power, held respon- 
sible to public opinion. We have now to examine how the 
executive power in France, which through so large a part 
of this century has been nearly or quite an irresponsible 
despotism, has under the Third Republic been brought so 
completely under the domination of the legislature. 



CHAPTER XV 

FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC (Continued) 

TN considering the position and working of executive 
-*- power in government the first element of importance 
is the mode of its constitution, and this is perhaps the 
question which in the short experience of popular govern- 
ment has received the least definite and satisfactory solu- 
tion. Whether the executive branch shall consist of a 
number of persons, as in the British ministry and the 
Swiss Federal Council, or of a single president, and if 
the latter whether he should be elected by the legislature 
or the people, are problems which are certainly open to 
discussion. As regards France, the subject is taken up 
by the Due de Broglie, in an article in the Revue des Deux 
Mondes for April 15, 1894, upon the constitution of 1875. 

I am aware that it is the fashion to say to-day that political insti- 
tutions are in themselves neither good nor bad and take their value 
only from the manner in which they are applied. It is certain that 
no institution has in itself sufficient merit to dispense with wisdom 
and skill in those who put it in operation, but on the other hand may 
there not be such as are so badly contrived that no art or prudeuce 
can correct their vices ? 

Elected by the Assembly, said the partisans of universal suffrage 
in the debates of 1848, the President will be only its servant and its 
agent. He will be lost in it and depend upon the caprices of its will. 
The executive power will then be under the yoke of the legislative 
power, and in this mixture of the two powers all real liberty will dis- 
appear. There is no longer liberty or safety, they added, when it is 
the same power which makes the laws and is intrusted with carrying 
them out. Instead of making laws with a view to the general advan- 
tage, and upon considerations of some permanence, they are made or 

312 



chap, xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 313 

revoked with an eye to private gain. They are made when they are 
convenient and revoked when they are troublesome. 

Elected by the people, replied the defenders of the Assembly, the 
President will hold his power from the same source as the Assembly 
itself ; he will be able to call himself as much as the Assembly the 
representative of the popular will, with this difference, that while in 
the Assembly the national representation is scattered and broken up, 
it will rest concentrated upon the head of the President with all the 
force of unity. Who will be sufficient to resist this double influence 
of the material force of power and the moral force of election ? Who 
will be able to resist the representative of several millions of men 
marching at the head of five hundred thousand soldiers ? In the plan 
of a constitution, still-born, presented by M. Dufaure in the name of 
M. Thiers just before their common fall, this electoral system is men- 
tioned only with the contemptuous qualification, " This mode already 
tried has not left a memory which recommends it." 

But even the most painful memories are quickly effaced in France, 
especially when a past evil, which seems only a dream, is replaced by 
a present evil which seems worse. The extreme weakness of execu- 
tive power of which we are to-day witnesses and of which I shall have 
presently to explain the causes, the spectacle of a parliament of which 
the encroachments absorb, confiscate, and annul every other authority 
except its own, have already given birth anew in more than one mind 
to regret at no longer seeing at the head of the State, instead of an 
impotent shadow, a chief whose arm would be furnished with real 
authority by a brilliant testimony of the national confidence. The 
election of a president by universal suffrage is a theme taken up 
again in the press by many distinguished minds, and if their isolated 
voices do not yet find an echo it would need only an incident easy to 
foresee, a too marked collapse of the existing system, to bring it back 
to unexpected honor. 

Speaking of the affair of General Boulanger, M. de 

Broglie says : — 

A recent experiment has shown us only too clearly what an attrac- 
tion, as imperious as unreflecting, often leads France to embody the 
idea of authority in a man whose name, taking possession of all imagi- 
nations, flies from mouth to mouth and fixes aU eyes upon himself. 

Is not that the tendency of all peoples, and only stronger 
in the French because they have been taught so little of 
self-government ? 1 

1 It was during the weakness of Louis Philippe's government that the 
outbreak of enthusiasm for the memory of the first Napoleon paved the 



314 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In good faith it cannot be denied that the choice of the people is, 
with regard to the election of the President as of every other public 
man, essentially the republican and the democratic method. Every 
republican constitution is placed upon the incline which leads to this. 
That has been the fate of the Federal Constitution of the United 
States, though its authors tried to protect themselves from that fate 
by intrusting the decisive vote to delegates named by special appoint- 
ment. Everybody knows that to-day this precaution has become in 
practice illusory, and that each delegate arrives as the bearer of a 
ballot written in advance, under the direction of universal suffrage. 
Thus national instinct, republican logic, a grand and specious example, 
everything might concur from one hour to another to bring us to the 
test of a plebiscitary election of a president. 

After admitting that the events of 1870 have destroyed 
all chance of a fresh Bonapartist usurpation, M. de Broglie 
continues : — 

But all the dangers of such an election would not consist in the 
chance of a dictatorship. Even legally and to a certain extent loyally 
applied to France, it would mean practically a system of permanent 
official candidacy, ruling from one end of the country to the other, 
and set at work by the chief of the State himself to insure the re- 
newal of his power, if he were ineligible, or the election of a successor 
whom, in the interest of his party, he might have selected to replace 
himself. No more powerful instrument could be imagined to establish 
the absolute dominion of one fraction of the nation over the other. 
This is the result which intelligent observers in America have pointed 
to as in a picture, the fidelity of which is not disputed. But it must 
be remarked that to exercise this action (which to the Americans 
themselves, although habituated to it, begins to seem excessive), the 
President of the United States disposes only of a small number of 
servants, scattered over a territory two or three times as large as that 
of Europe ; that in this immense space he must encounter the resist- 
ance of thirty or forty states, having each an independent organization ; 
that to secure obedience he has under his orders only a small army of 
thirty thousand men; that he is everywhere watched by a magistracy, 
which, so far from depending upon him, escapes him in its lower 

way for the Second Empire. It is significant that at the present time 
(1896) there is a fresh revival of ardent interest in all the memoirs and 
events of the earlier time. A strong civil ruler, holding power for half a 
generation and leading the Republic to orderly and peaceful success, 
might divert the influence of the baneful meteor which for a century has 
been such a curse to France. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 315 

ranks by election, and overtops him in the higher by a supreme 
tribunal to which he is amenable. Then compare the feeble weight 
of this authority with the colossus of French administration, of 
which the thousand feet rest and the hundred arms act at once 
on all the points of the contracted soil which bears its crushing 
weight. 

These are the arguments against a popularly elected 
president. Those in favor we shall have to consider in 
treating of the United States. It may be observed, how- 
ever, that the safeguard is in the presence and public re- 
sponsibility of his ministers in the face of an independent 
and vigilant legislature. We will now examine how far 
these arguments are offset by those against a president 
elected by an assembly. The Due de Broglie quite ap- 
proves of the rejection of the plan of electing a president 
by universal suffrage. But he finds himself confronted 
with that other alternative rejected by the Assembly of 
1848. How could it be managed that if elected by the 
Parliament the chief of the State should be anything but 
its agent and obedient servant? How could there be con- 
trived for him an existence independent of the authority 
from which he emanated ? 

Some means of doing this must be found, however, under penalty 
of arriving by an indirect but not very long road at the annihilation 
of executive power under parliamentary omnipotence. Now the sepa- 
ration of the two powers is such an elementary principle of modern 
public law — respect for which is so generally recognized as essential 
both to public order and individual liberty — that although it has been 
several times violated during our revolutionary crises, I think no party 
would propose to establish as normal and regular a system which 
ignores or only compromises it. 

M. de Broglie then shows that the constitution of 1875, 
unlike that of 1848, is not explained by any light of dis- 
cussion. With a departure from the usual French practice, 
there is no enunciation whatever of abstract principle, but 
only the most naked practical detail. 



316 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The discussion of the organic law of 1875 as to the powers of the 
President was hasty and short, and practically amounted to nothing. 
The text of this law is that of an amendment, which owed the favor 
of its original adoption by a very small majority to the circumstance 
of its having passed almost unperceived. No development was given 
to it in the subsequent deliberations. It is, then, in the text itself 
that we must seek for the precautions which, while preserving the 
election of the President by the chambers, aim to secure his dignity 
and independence. 

I do not think it can be considered such a guarantee to have in- 
trusted the right of election of the President, not to a single chamber 
but to a congress formed of the two chambers jointly. Certainly 
there can have been no doubt that this joint power was only apparent. 
Pure affair of courtesy to the Senate, for the two chambers being 
wholly unequal in number (nearly two deputies to one senator), the 
largest body, even if greatly divided, will always find in the minority 
of the other the means of enforcing the will of its own majority. It 
is, in fact, the Chamber of Deputies which makes the President, and 
in any case it will not allow any name to pass which has not its con- 
sent and confidence. 1 

A second and perhaps better guarantee of independence is given to 
the President in the right to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies with 
the consent of the Senate, and thus to terminate by an appeal to the 
country a disagreement in which he thought law and justice was on 
his side, and which appeared to him to compromise the public interest. 

The system is completed by the article which limits the responsi- 
bility of the President to the very rare and almost impossible case of 
high treason, and leaves to the ministers whom he chooses and names 
himself the burden of bearing before the chambers the responsibility 
of general policy. 

It is to be observed that these provisions do not include 
the veto, which is held to be of so much importance in the 
United States. 

M. de Broglie of course wishes to prove that monarchy- 
is the only possible government for France, and that 
whether the President is elected by the people or the 
legislature the result must equally come in revolution. 

1 It is curious to note how quickly this reasoning was disproved in the 
election of President Casimir Perier, on June 26, 1894, by a majority of 
the Senate joined to a minority of the Chamber — a proof of the value of 
organization. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 317 

He says that these two rights of dissolution and of per- 
sonal inviolability of the executive have never existed 
in any republic in the world, — though as to the last he 
is certainly mistaken, the President of the United States 
being liable only for the same high crimes and misde- 
meanors as that of France, — and argues that the quali- 
ties which make these provisions available in a monarchy 
are wanting in a president. In fact, the only one of 
real value is the power of dissolution. The English 
ministry, which has come to hold the real executive 
power, is elected by the legislature as much as the Presi- 
dent of France. The force which has kept the House 
of Commons in strict discipline for a hundred and fifty 
years, which has compelled it to work by means of two 
compact parties, and to leave to the executive the great 
powers over legislation which have been described, is the 
power of dissolution lodged with the ministry, and the 
exercise of which is seldom or never forbidden by 
the sovereign. 

If the Opposition in England undertakes to overthrow 
a ministry, it must be prepared to furnish another to 
take its place, under penalty of incurring the expense 
of a new election with an almost certainty of defeat ; 
and, moreover, the new ministry must be competent to 
carry on the government, under penalty of burying its 
party in ridicule and contempt. These results can only 
be secured by rigid subordination in the ranks of the 
parties both in and out of power and the concentration 
of all their efforts in putting forward their best men. 

In France the power of dissolution does not rest with 
the ministry at all, and they are defenceless against the 
chambers. That power is in the hands of the President, 
who is much more likely to regard it as an instrument 
for his own defence than for the protection of the min- 
istry, who are not of his creation, are practically beyond 



318 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

his control, and in whom he feels but very little interest. 
This is just the view M. de Broglie takes. 

To escape from his difficulties is it supposed that the President 
would make use of the right of dissolution which is intrusted to him 
for an extreme case? It would be an act of energy hardly to be 
expected from a power so little sure of itself. Besides, it is not clear 
at what moment he could profitably draw from the sheath this weapon 
too heavy for his arm. Is it in the first part of his presidency and 
while he still has to deal with a chamber in which the party prevails 
which has elected him? Yet what would be the object seeing that, as 
the creation of the Chamber, he is bound to come to an agreement 
with it? Is it when a new election shall have placed him in the pres- 
ence of another assembly animated by a different spirit ? But of what 
use is it to appeal to the country when it has just spoken, and why ask 
it again when it has answered in advance? 

But even the President cannot exercise the power with- 
out the consent of the Senate. Now the Senate is a part 
of the legislature, and therefore by its nature hostile to 
the executive. When it comes to taking sides between 
the President and the Chamber of Deputies the Senate 
will always incline towards the latter, and thus the edge 
is blunted of the only weapon the President possesses ; 
and the groups of the Chamber can unite to pull down 
a ministry without any responsibility for providing a 
substitute or any fear of being sent back to the electors. 

And yet it seems as if a president resolute to put an 
end to the prevailing anarchy might make a personal 
and direct appeal to the country, either by a dissolution 
or at the period of regular elections, stating clearly the 
difficulty and asking for support in steadying the execu- 
tive power. This is the opinion of at least one among 
the many French writers who are anxiously studying the 
political situation. After saying that the country is 
looking with anxiety for the one man who is to lead 
them out of the present difficulties, he says : — 

I see nothing in this to be ashamed of. The shame is in estimating 
so poorly this land of France as to declare in advance that henceforth 






xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 319 

in great national crises she can bring forth only a ruinous dictator, a 
military adventurer, or an unscrupulous politician. If the exaspera- 
tion of discontent has come near delivering the country to a Bou- 
langer, have we not seen republics defended by a Cavaignac and a 
Washington? The President of our Republic (M. Carnot) makes only 
one mistake, that of ignoring his strength. Having reached his high 
place without intrigues and without noise, with a reputation modest 
but pure, he has gradually grown in public opinion from his irre- 
proachable attitude and the happy events which have marked his 
term of office. Other statesmen may make a larger figure in political 
circles, but their reputation hardly reaches the dumb masses who 
have room in their houses for only one portrait, in their memories 
for only one name. All the machinations which these experts could 
combine would not prevail in the rural districts against a direct word 
of the President. 

Let us suppose that in the next crisis, when we have descended some 
steps still lower into anarchy, the President of the Republic, for whom 
nothing forbids a direct appeal to the people, should at length desire 
to reassure and to govern the country, that he should make up a 
cabinet of men of business taken from the Senate or outside, and arm 
them with a decree of dissolution. I would wager all I have dearest 
in the world that, after such an act, the country consulted in the name 
of the President would send up a majority compact and docile in the 
hands of the chief of the State. 1 

Experience showed that M. Carnot was not equal to 
any such achievement ; and it may well be doubted 
whether any man who is will ever obtain election at 
the hands of the legislature. Even in the United States, 
where the chief executive is elected by the people and 
is wholly independent of the legislature, hardly any 
president or governor has ever dared to assert himself 
against it. 

We will return once more to the Due de Broglie. 

In conclusion, the result of this inquiry is that the chief of the 
State is in reality completely annihilated, and that his legal impotence 
is a fact of which some may complain and to which others may sub- 

1 Count Melchior de Vogue\ "L'Heure Pr^sente," Bevue des Deux 
Mondes, December, 1892. The extract is not less interesting that within 
eighteen months afterwards President Carnot fell under the dagger of an 



320 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

mit, but which nobody can deny. Thenceforth, the legislative power 
existing alone, since the executive no longer amounts to anything, we 
are coming to the system, pure and simple, of parliamentary omnipo- 
tence. 

I cannot, therefore, share the surprise of the ingenious publicists 
who wonder that under such a system the chambers are insubordinate, 
the ministries fluctuating and unable to gather about them a working 
majority. And what means could be found for disciplining an 
assembly when, knowing that it is the sovereign ruler, it sees before 
it no authority which it is bound to respect ? Never, within the 
memory of man, was a constitutional ministry exposed to such a trial. 

Yet even M. de Broglie is staggered by the persistent 
endurance of the Republic. 

Will the Republic find in the counsels of moderation and prudence, 
which are given to it and which it seems disposed to follow, the 
strength to stop itself on this decline? I can hardly believe it; but 
the future alone can tell. 

It remains to consider the instruments by which the 
legislature has reduced the executive to submission. It 
is the system of working by standing committees, on the 
same principle as in the United States, though their 
organization is different. 1 

The Constituent Assembly of 1848 was divided into 
fifteen standing committees like ours, one corresponding 
to each ministerial department ; but they were abolished 
by the Legislative Assembly on the ground, curiously 
illustrated by the experience of the United States, that 
while they were appropriate to a constituent body which 
exercised sovereign power, yet in one which was purely 
legislative they were the occasion of incessant encroach- 
ment upon and conflict with the executive power. It 
may be doubted, however, whether the system which is 
actually in force is any better. 

The system of bureaux extends back to the States-Gen- 

1 The account which follows is taken from the valuable work of M. 
Eugene Pierre — " Traite - de Droit Pratique Electoral et Parlementaire," 
1893. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 321 

eral of the old monarchy. By it the Assembly is divided 
into a number of equal bodies. In 1789 this was done 
alphabetically, and also for a short period in 1848. But, 
with this exception, from the time of the Restoration to 
this day it has been done by lot. The names were drawn 
from a box by the president of the Chamber and proclaimed 
by an officer. But this somewhat tedious process was 
in 1876 superseded by a mechanical device which performs 
the operation instantaneously. It seems difficult to under- 
stand why it should be thought necessary to repeat the 
operation every month. But that has been the practice 
from the beginning of the century, and both houses are 
divided into these constantly dissolving bodies : 9 in 
number for the Senate, 3 of 34 members and 6 of 33; and 
11 for the 576 deputies, 4 of their bureaux having 53 
members and 7 having 52 members. 

The bureaux are organized by choosing a president and 
a secretary. Every measure proposed in the Chamber or 
in the Senate is sent by the presiding officer to all the 
bureaux. These bodies then elect usually one but some- 
times more members of a commission to consider that 
special subject. It is evident that these commissions may 
be numbered by the hundred, that difficult questions may 
arise upon what commissions and upon how many a mem- 
ber can serve, and that a good deal of competition may be 
developed in the bureaux as to the places on important 
commissions. The commissions may discuss and amend 
any measure at their discretion, or may even substitute 
for it one wholly different. The commissions may meet 
where they please, in their own rooms, in the ministerial 
departments, and even on a bench apart in the assembly 
hall. Their sessions are secret as regards the public, and 
though formerly open to all the members of the Assembly 
are now closed to them, "that the deliberations of the 
commission, which should be calm and well considered, 



322 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

may not be needlessly disturbed." 1 Even the communi- 
cations between the commissions and the ministers are 
held only by the president of the commission or some 
member appointed for the purpose, or, in serious cases, 
through the medium of the Chamber itself. 2 The authors 
of measures, however, and the movers of amendments 
have a right to be heard by the commission. The com- 
mission chooses one of its members to be the reporter of 
its conclusions to the Assembly, who of course represents 
the majority, though the minority sometimes appoints a 
separate reporter of its own. To those who know any- 
thing of the work of standing legislative committees in 
the United States, it is evident what opportunities for 
intrigue and jobbery are presented by the French system. 
The budget commission, which examines both revenue 
and expenditure, is composed of thirty-three members of 
the Chamber of Deputies, that is, three members elected 
by each bureau. As it goes into the smallest details of 
the budget its labors are long and rarely consume less 
than three months. It divides itself into sub-commissions 
on the separate ministerial departments, each appointing 
its own reporter to the Assembly, while a separate reporter- 
general acts on behalf of the whole. 

The importance of having the budget reported in due season 
authorizes the Chamber to treat this commission differently from those 
which are special by fixing a time within which its reports should be 
made ; but this course should be pursued with reserve as it has the 
disadvantage of casting a sort of suspicion upon the zeal of the com- 
mission from the outset of its labors. 8 

When the Assembly met at the end of April, 1894, a deputy of 
Seiue-et-Marne, M. Montaut, an arch-enemy of intrigues, proposed to 
draw by lot special bureaux of the Assembly, which, as soon as ap- 
pointed, and without having time to recognize one another, should 
proceed to the nomination of three commissioners. The Chamber 
voted this proposition by a large majority. Was it a precaution which 

1 Eugene Pierre, op. cit., § 750. a Ibid., § 748. 8 Ibid., § 770. 



xv FKANCE — THE THIED REPUBLIC 323 

it took against its own impulse ; or a shrewd means of annulling at a 
blow the long work of solicitation which some candidates had already 
employed towards the members of their respective bureaux? 

If the commission arrives at a vote before the 15th of August, the 
day of meeting of the Councils General, it will be a wonder; and what 
will the Chamber do in the meantime ? 1 

It points to some very unsatisfactory experience of 
budget work that the Chamber should resort to this hap- 
hazard mode of dealing with the finances. 

Once in possession of the budget, can the commission 
send it back as a whole to the government that the latter 
may effect changes in the direction of economy and reor- 
ganize the equilibrium ? Or is it to go to work itself and 
substitute its figures for those of the government? The 
commission of 1888 adopted the former course, and, say- 
ing that the budget was not satisfactory, asked the gov- 
ernment for new propositions. It is significant that the 
ministry replied by a letter which, without rejecting the 
possibility of economies, left to the commission to propose 
them. The question was brought before the Chamber, 
which supported its commission. 2 In the great majority 
of cases it may be assumed that the commission would 
only too gladly take the work out of the hands of the 
government and frame the budget to suit itself. 3 

After the general budget of the State or the proposi- 
tion of special credits has been voted by the Chamber, 
it goes to the Senate and is submitted to a commission 
of eighteen members of that body chosen in the bureaux. 
With such amendments as may be carried through in the 

1 Bevue des Deux Mondes, May 1, 1894 — " Chronique de la Quinzaine." 

2 Eugene Pierre, op. cit., § 771. 

3 Our journals discuss interminably whether the Chamber ought spon- 
taneously to form itself, distribute its groups, decide upon the lines of its 
programmes, determine its tendencies ; or if it is the government which 
ought to have the initiative of this great work of physiology and politics. 
— Paul Lafitte, Bevue Bleue, November 11, 1893. 



324 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Senate it is returned to the Chamber, which has the final 
deciding voice. 

In studying the effect of this procedure, we must keep 
clearly in view the difference between the English and 
the French practice. In Great Britain we have seen 1 
that the conduct of legislation — wholly in public matters 
and largely in private — is in the hands of the executive 
government, which has exclusively the initiating power ; 
that the Parliament acts merely as a criticising body with 
a power of veto which it does in committee of the whole. 
There are no standing committees empowered to pull to 
pieces the propositions of the government and to mix 
them up at pleasure with other propositions of all kinds 
emanating from individual members. The bureaux and 
the commissions of the French Chamber, like the stand- 
ing committees of the Congress of the United States, are 
made up of members representing districts and not the 
nation, which is illustrated by the remark that it is true 
in mathematics, but not true in politics, that the sum of 
the parts is equal to the whole. The ministry, on the 
other hand, whether in France or Great Britain, being 
at the head of the national administration, do represent 
the whole nation. Again, they represent the wants and 
needs of the administration, and are responsible for it, 
which the members — whether of the Chamber or the 
commissions — are not. A proposition of the British 
ministry, therefore, which has to run the gauntlet of 
parliameutary discussion, has three great features. It 
must, in the interest of the ministry, be conceived from 
the point of view of the national and not of private 
interests. It must be adapted to the requirements of 
administration and consistent with other laws and prac- 
tice already in force. It cannot be thrust aside by the 
schemes of individual members prepared with a view 

i Chap. V. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 325 

to local and private interests. The French ministry 
may prepare their measures in the same way, but these 
measures are at once taken out of their hands and given 
over to the bureaux and commissions, which have the 
power and certainly the will to reverse their character 
completely in all three respects. 

Whether or not the difference is owing to the power 
of dissolution, the effect of the English system is that 
it brings strong men into the government, — men of 
ability and integrity, and such as command the confi- 
dence of the people ; while the publicity of debate, the 
following of chosen leaders, the character of speeches 
and votes, the impossibility for private members of get- 
ting any share in or any control of administration till 
they have worked their way into office — these things 
have a similar effect upon the legislature. The effect 
of the French system is, as regards the government, that 
men of ability and character will not take places where 
they have responsibility without power, where their plans 
of administration are almost certain to be overthrown by 
the caprice or intrigue of fractions of the legislature, where 
even their tenure of office is not only uncertain but cer- 
tain to be temporary. The quality of the ministers must, 
therefore, steadily decline, and their places will fall into 
the hands of men who seek them for the honor and emolu- 
ment to be derived from them, and not with the ambition 
of glorifying them by splendor of achievement. 

The effect of the system upon the legislature is to 
bring forward a class of men suited to the work of the 
republican union, as described by M. Lamy in the ex- 
tract quoted in our last chapter, — an effect which will 
be more fully discussed in the chapters devoted to the 
United States. 

Fifteen years ago (1878) the chambers did not hold in our politi- 
cal and social organism the place which they occupy to-day. In the 



326 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

face of the executive they were recognized as a power independent 
but watched and sometimes threatened. By the side of their will was 
the separate will of the government, and it was felt that the second 
should have the direction of the first. To-day the situation is reversed. 
It is no longer a question of seeking in the collection of precedents for 
tactics capable of preventing a government from laying siege to the 
chambers. The chambers are themselves the government. Before 
acting, the ministers try to penetrate the intentions of the majority ; 
it is not their programme to guide those whom the electors have 
chosen, and the whole secret of their tenure of office is found in the 
degree of their skill in catching the lessons of the votes. 1 

As far back as 1840, Thiers, in a letter to Guizot, de- 
scribed the effects of the predominance of a legislature in 

ministers pale, hesitating, without avowed principles, without other 
pretensions than to live from day to day, without any point of support 
except universal lassitude and discouragement, reduced to efface them- 
selves on all important occasions, to protect themselves by continual 
complaisance, now towards the king, now towards the Chamber and 
each fraction of the Chamber great and small, and to manufacture 
for themselves every morning an artificial majority by concessions 
or compliments, by promises and caresses, by weighing in scales of 
spiders' webs the number of situations which they have distributed 
in the Post-office on the one hand and the Tobacco Department on 
the other. 2 

And the Journal des Bebats at the same time described 
the ministry 

as going from Left to Right and Right to Left in the same hour ; as 
having neither plan nor system nor will nor majority anywhere. It 
is a perpetual solicitor of contrary votes. It buys a success only by 
making concessions of principle to the Right, and voting with the 
Left. 2 

These accounts will answer equally for the monarchy 
with its extremely limited electorate and for the Third 
Republic with its universal suffrage. 

From this preponderance of the legislature, again, results 
the Socialism which forms such a large element in modern 

1 Eugene Pierre, op. cit., Introduction. 

2 Thureau-Dangin, "History of the Monarchy of July," Vol. IV., 
pp.107. 151. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 327 

politics, and appears so especially threatening in France. 
A strong executive, relying upon the support of a national 
public opinion, would have sufficient confidence in itself 
to repress local disorder and violence. On the other hand, 
a legislature made up of a large number of local represent- 
atives will be paralyzed. The member from the district 
in which the disorder occurs will be at the mercy of the 
violent element, while the members from other districts 
will reason that it is not their business to take care of 
his district, and will be quite sufficiently occupied with 
anxiety about their own, and all alike will be jealous of 
executive action. 

A short account of the fall of the ministry of M. Casi- 
mir Perier in May, 1894, will serve as a sample of similar 
events. A certain M. Toussaint appears as a type of 
many deputies, 

who belong not to their district, but to suffering humanity, and their 
intervention generally has for its object, or at any rate for its result, 
to prolong human suffering. Having gone to Trignac to stimulate a 
strike and been arrested at the head of a crowd of rioters, he pleaded 
his exemption as a deputy and was discharged by the government offi- 
cial, while his followers were proceeded against. M. Perier, however, 
placed the officer on the retired list and asked the Chamber for au- 
thority to prosecute M. Toussaint. It was accorded by a majority of 
sixty-five. Since his accession on December 3, 1893, Perier has been 
regarded as one of the strongest ministers who have been in power, 
being very rich, indifferent to office, and resolute to obstinacy. Such 
support, added to his previous resistance to Socialist attacks, seemed 
most hopeful for the future. A week later his Minister of Public 
Works was asked whether he had allowed delegates of the employees 
of the state railways to attend meetings of a railway workmen's union. 
Replying in the negative, he was attacked by a Socialist leader and 
defeated in two votes, first by a majority of thirty-four and then of 
twenty-eight. The ministry at once resigned, and the President was 
called upon to form the thirty-second government which has held 
office in little more than twenty years, applying first to an ex-minister, 
who refused the thankless task of trying to govern Parliament witir 
out a majority and without the power of dissolution. 1 

1 London Spectator, May 26, 1894. 



328 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Pointing to the probability of a government of Social- 
ists, the same journal observed : — 

Naturally the funds fell, and all who are interested in order are 
shaking in their shoes, believing that the government will be in reality, 
if not in name, a government of anti-capitalists. It is therefore more 
than probable that as a consequence of the fall of M. Perier the " Red 
Spectre " will be abroad again with the usual result, — a passionate 
desire in the minds of the majority to find protection from the Cham- 
ber in the authority of some strong man, or some change in the con- 
stitution which shall greatly strengthen the hands of the executive. 

Again : — 

Why the French Chamber, when freely elected, is always more 
violent than the electors who send it up is a fact which no one within 
our knowledge has ever explained or denied. Why, again, a majority 
of property holders in possession of the vote, electing the President 
indirectly and holding control through him of all physical force, are 
so madly afraid of an anti-social minority is as inexplicable to out- 
siders as it is to those who have written the history of 1848, 1852, and 
of the Parisian Commune. 

It seems a simple explanation and quite sufficient for 
all these periods referred to, that a legislature left to 
itself and without authoritative leaders is nothing more 
nor less than a mob, and that all mobs, through their 
want of concert of action and of mutual confidence, and 
through the prevalence of mutual distrust and suspicion, 
are always at the mercy of the most violent and reckless 
portion and those who have nothing to lose. The mass 
of the voters suffers from precisely the same difficulties 
as the legislature, and the only remedy in both cases lies 
in a strong individual executive head, endowed with full 
power to govern but restrained by public responsibility to 
both. 

Do you think that in a parliament the question of a majority is 
only a question of arithmetic ? In politics, as in war, the number is 
nothing when the combatants of the same army or of the same party 
do not feel each other's elbows. If you take three thousand or four 
thousand men and put knapsacks on their backs pnd guns on their 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 329 

shoulders, will you for that have a regiment? Evidently no! A 
regiment needs officers, company formations, discipline, cohesion. 
And for a majority which is to govern there is needed common ideas 
and a fixed programme. 1 

But these last things are only possible through officers, 
cohesion, and discipline, just as in a regiment. 

The experience of the representative system in France in this last 
quarter of a century has evolved two related phenomena, which, from 
some points of view, may be considered as alarming for our public 
liberty. One is the development of an exaggerated legislative activ- 
ity; the other is the transformation which has taken place, and is 
increasing daily, in the form and in the nature of our legislative acts. 

Our representatives give us too many new laws, and more and more 
the laws which they give us, instead of being declarations of prin- 
ciples, are the regulations of details. 

The progress of democratic ideas in bringing the elector nearer to 
the deputy has created in both a disquieting conception of the func- 
tion of law. The elector sees in it a means of satisfying all the wants 
which are felt by himself or those about him. It seems to him that 
no interests exist for which the law is not bound to provide, no situ- 
ation which the law cannot regulate. If we add that the law appears 
to the great number of deputies as an instrument placed at their dis- 
position for assuring the triumph of the smallest claims of their 
electors, we shall not be surprised to see laws piled upon laws, and 
shall not hesitate to recognize in this a dangerous tendency, if we ad- 
mit that so far from reproaching our legislators with their excessive 
fecundity it is rather of sterility that the electoral body accuses them. 2 

And the writer goes on to say that besides expecting 
the executive to carry out the law the legislature intrusts 
it with the power of ordering all sorts of regulative de- 
tails, or, in other words, secondary legislation, a remark 
which is curiously illustrated by the system of executive 
commissions established in Massachusetts. 3 Indeed the 
whole passage will bear application to that State. 

Nowhere are the effects of the organization of the 

1 Paul Lafitte, Bevue Bleue, September 9, 1893. 

2 H. Barthelemy, Bevue Bolitique et Parlementaire, January, 1897. 

3 See Chap. XXII. 



330 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

French legislature above described more disastrously visi- 
ble than in the finances. 

The best way of serving the Republic is to have good finance, to 
have a well-balanced budget, to manage the national fortune so as to 
bear without yielding the weight of charges which cannot be evaded. 
That is what M. Leon Say (as finance minister) has done. He has 
applied practical good sense to establishing a very simple budget, 
sparing the country new sacrifices, and has at the same time avoided 
touching prematurely a financial edifice constructed with so much 
difficulty years ago. M. Gambetta, on the other hand, who has be- 
come a passed master of finance since he is (the wholly irresponsible) 
president of the budget commission, has his own system. He has his 
financial programme with its obligatory articles, revision of the land 
registry, income tax, diminution or suppression of certain indirect 
taxes, reform of the administrative service, revision of the pension 
laws, complete modification of the relation of the State with the great 
railroad companies. 1 

In fact, the year 1877 was a culminating point in our budgetary 
history since the war, and the year 1888 is another. From 1871 to 
1874 everything was to be restored, and the war indemnity was to be 
paid. M. Thiers with his financial genius was equal to the task. He 
made enormous loans and through their success discharged the debts 
to the enemy, liberated our territory, and introduced into the manage- 
ment of our finances the only method which can insure prosperity, 
that is to say, clearness in accounts, equilibrium rigorously maintained 
between actual receipts and actual expenses, and the putting in force 
of a real sinking fund. 

In England, the sinking fund, which is the real touchstone of well- 
managed finances, has reduced the total of the public debt by about 
one hundred and fifty millions of francs annually. 

The effects, thus far similar, have resulted from the 
same cause, the entire administration of the finances by a 
single executive head. 

We, in France, on the other hand, starting from 1881 (about the 
date of the republican union, above described by M. Lamy) have 
prided ourselves on entering the road of an annual gap of six hun- 
dred millions between the total expenses and the regular receipts, 
and have since then, in profound peace, in the full development of 
our riches, increased our debt by several milliards. 2 

1 Bevue des Deux Mondes, May, 1876 — "Chronique de la Quinzaine." 

2 Le Budget de la France. A. Moireau, Bevue Bleue, April 14, 1894. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 331 

If the management of the finances in England was with- 
drawn from the chancellor of the exchequer and intrusted 
to committees of Parliament it would take but a few years 
to tell a similar story. 

The recent history of tariff legislation is also singularly 
illustrative of the same principle. We must assume, for 
the purpose of this argument, that a protective tariff 
means the favoring of powerful private and class interests 
at the expense of the general public. Both France and 
the United States, where the finances are in the hands of 
committees or commissions of the legislature, are almost 
hopelessly entangled in the meshes of a complicated pro- 
tective tariff which is constantly changing, and generally 
for the worse. Great Britain, where the finances are 
managed by a single executive official, the chancellor of 
the exchequer, and where no changes can be made with- 
out his direct initiative, declared for free trade nearly 
half a century ago, and through all vicissitudes, and al- 
though constantly threatened by hostile foreign tariffs, 
has never wavered for a moment. Whatever may be 
thought of the policy of free trade she has at least given 
to her merchants the stability and permanence of system 
which are almost of more importance than either high or 
low duties. 

The conclusion which we venture to draw from this 
examination of a century of French history is that the na- 
tion has made an immense, and, upon the whole, a steady 
gain in political sense and self-control. 

Never have positive laws been respected in France as during the 
last twenty years. Never has written law been for the legitimate 
impatience of conflicting parties a more solid check-rein. Who would 
have believed a few years ago that a constitution could live, that a 
government could endure, with full opportunity given to writers to 
say everything they please both against laws and against men ? 1 

1 Eugene Pierre, op. cit., Preface. 



332 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The problem which has not been solved, and which, 
allowing for the difference of circumstances, is almost as 
threatening as it was a hundred years ago, is the organiza- 
tion of government in the relations of the two branches, 
the means of preventing a fatal preponderance of execu- 
tive power without falling into an equally disastrous pre- 
ponderance of the legislature. And that which, should 
make this history of intense practical interest to Ameri- 
cans, that which justifies the long quotations here given 
from French political writers, is the wonderful parallelism 
in the operation of principles, even though with differences 
of development, in France and the United States. 

Since the above was written, a book upon Modern France 
by an Englishman has appeared and attracted much atten- 
tion. 1 The writer of it has spent some years in the study 
of that country, in all its parts and its different classes. 
How far the work is apposite for the present purpose will 
appear from one sentence in the preface : — 

The capital subject of these volumes is Political France after a 
century of Revolution. 

The book may be said to bear the same relation to 
France which Mr. Bryce's "American Commonwealth" 
does to the United States, a class of literature the value 
of which cannot be overestimated. The keynote of Mr. 
Bodley's conclusions may be summed up thus : that France 
is not fitted for parliamentary institutions, which have 
proved a complete failure ; that Frenchmen like a central- 
ized and orderly government such as was established in 
its most perfect form by the first Napoleon, and that under 
it they have been very well governed, in fact much better 
than they are now ; that they must inevitably return to 
it, and it is probably much better that they should. This 
does not in the least interfere with appreciation of their 
1 "France," by John Edward Courtenay Bodley, 1898. 



xv TRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 333 

individual character. For sobriety, intelligence, family 
relations, thrift, patriotism, elevated ideas, Mr. Bodley 
places the French at least on a level with any other people. 

In these volumes we shall not see much of the more excellent 
elements in the community, nor of the great mass of the people, 
whose silent, sober energy makes up for the errors of its conspicuous 



Speaking of a workman with whom he was brought in 
contact : — 

The experience of this sage is that of the great balk of the inhab- 
itants of France ; they toil at their callings so long as work is to be 
done ; they take their holidays happily yet thriftily ; and their sole 
participation in the politics of the nation is that their energy supplies 
the remedy for the damage done to France by political incendiaries of 
various denominations. . . . 2 

In studying the political institutions of France, it must always be 
remembered that, however unsatisfactory a spectacle the conduct of 
public affairs may present, the land contains several millions of worthy 
people of various classes engaged in the tillage of the soil, in crafts of 
skill and in commerce, as well as in intellectual pursuits, who are 
working, most of them unconsciously, for the benefit of the com- 
munity ; and, moreover, such lives abound not merely in the silence of 
the fields and vineyards, or amid the placid murmur of country towns, 
for Paris, the nursery of revolution, the playground of frivolity, the 
theatre of political adventure, is also a brilliant centre and one of the 
great workshops of the world. . . . 3 

There are no creatures of the human species so orderly and method- 
ical as the French. In the private life of the people, their thrift, 
their care in keeping accounts, their skill in organizing simple pleas- 
ures in the intervals of toil, the neat attire of the women, the formal- 
ity and good service of the meals even in humble homes, all testify 
to a provident and systematic temperament inconsistent with action 
from impulse. 4 

But they take no interest in public life. 

It would be too much to say that the three millions of electors on 
the register who fail to record their votes at the elections include all 

1 Introduction to Vol. I., p. 56. 2 Ibid., p. 58. 

3 Ibid. 4 Book I., Chap. IV., p. 243. 



334 THE LESSON OF POPULAK GOVERNMENT chap. 

that is best and worthiest in the nation, but the proposition would not 
be extravagant. Those who abstain are not only men eminent in 
letters and art, of ill example, perhaps, in their disdain for politics ; 
no rare philosophers like M. Taine, who, attaining manhood at the 
epoch when universal suffrage was granted and uncertain how to 
bestow his vote, spent the rest of his life without reaching a definite 
conclusion (Preface to the " Ancien Regime "). In a democracy such 
fastidious units, however eminent, count for little. Their abstention 
becomes important when it is joined to that of humble workers in 
every sphere of life, in every region of the land. Explore the French 
department; live among the people, and observe the most industrious 
villager, or the most cultivated tradesman in the country town ; ques- 
tion him about the local deputy or the elections, and his reply will be, 
" Je ne m'occupe pas de politique." A peasant may use a more vigor- 
ous verb. 1 

This is supposed to prove that they are not fitted for 
representative institutions. It seems to us only to prove 
that their representative institutions, as operated, are not 
fitted for them. The same phenomenon is increasingly 
apparent in the United States, at least in local elections ; 
for the presidential election, for reasons hereinafter given, 
still draws out a very full vote, as we believe that similar 
elections would do in France. 

Again, public life attracts only an inferior class of men. 

To one acquainted with the different phases of French society the 
contrast is painfully striking between the level of intelligence of 
political circles and that of the financial and industrial world. At 
Lyons, at Bordeaux, and other commercial centres, the men who de- 
velop the wealth and maintain the prestige of those cities by their 
high character, their public spirit, and their manifest ability, seem to 
be designated to direct the affairs of the country ; but if by rare hazard 
one of them is elected to Parliament he remains a private member. 2 

We shall see later that exactly the same state of things 
exists in the United States, and that the reasons for it in 
both cases are to be found not in the character of either 
people but in the conditions of public life. 

i Vol. II., Book III., Chap. II., p. 81. 
2i6/(f.,Chap. V., p. 286. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 335 

It is the constant tendency of the French legislature to arrogate 
the functions of a convention and to override the principle of the 
separation of powers — a sure sign of the unsuitableness of parlia- 
mentary institutions to the French national character. 1 

It is no more a sign of that than the equal tendency, 
constantly displayed, of Congress and the State legis- 
latures in the same direction is as to the character of 
the people of the United States. 

It was observed that when M. Freycinet took his seat in the Acad- 
emy, the practised debater of the Senate and the Chamber was less 
skilled in speech than the learned Academician who received him, 
M. Gre*ard, a professor of the University who had devoted his talents 
to the organization of public instruction. It was a striking instance 
of the fact that the best ability of France shuns politics. The legis- 
lature had been scoured to find a statesman fit to take a seat in the 
company founded by a minister of France, and when the best speci- 
men of his class was produced he was, by a modest professor, out- 
matched in eloquence, — the essential arm of a politician's equipment. 
What rich material France contains for ministries and legislative 
assemblies of the highest order ! Around the tables of the Institute 
alone the gifts of oratory, wit, political science, and knowledge of 
humanity abound. But the French are not a parliamentary people, 
and while they are waiting for a regime to suit them they are uncom- 
monly wise in not encouraging their worthiest sons to waste their 
powers in an ill-contrived parliament. . . . 2 

Previous French experiments in representative institutions were 
always too short-lived, being abbreviated by revolution, and were 
founded on too artificial a basis to afford material for judgment. 8 

In fact, they have never to this day had any fair trial 
at all. 

But under the Third Republic they have been tried, during a 
period of perfect peace and domestic tranquillity, on a democratic 
foundation under the most durable regime of the century, which has 
never had a serious rival: and out of these favoring circumstances 
the parliamentary system has emerged irretrievably discredited. The 
temperament of the French people is not the sole cause of its failure. 

i Book II., Chap. II, p. 309. 

a Vol. II. , Book IV., Chap. VI, p. 439. 

8 Vol. I., Introduction, p. 32. 



336 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

A fundamental obstacle to thwart its working is its combination with 
centralized administration, constructed to be manipulated by one 
strong hand, and instead of modifying the defects of centralization 
parliamentary government aggravates them. 1 

A period of thirty years is expected to modify and 
transform the habits and traditions of three hundred, 
and because it fails to do so its efforts are pronounced to 
be incompatible with the character of the nation. 

An Englishman who observes the sad state of things and the 
depressing effect it has on some of the most enlightened thinkers in 
France, exclaims, ' But why not do away with your centralized sys- 
tem and give parliamentary government a chance?' The reply is, 
that if the Napoleonic fabric of centralization which has survived 
the vicissitudes of the century were demolished, it would bring down 
with it every institution in France with havoc more ruinous than 
that of 1789, and to build another structure another Napoleon would 
be needed. 2 

The basis assumed for this reasoning is that the whole 
fabric must be destroyed at once and by violence. The 
attempt has been made for thirty years to modify it grad- 
ually. If it has failed it is because all attempts at gov- 
ernment must fail when the instrument is a legislature 
alone with practical destruction of executive power. 

It may be that he planned his reconstruction on wrong lines, as 
M. Taine objects, and instead of strengthening the centralizing 
features of the old regime he would have done better to strew the 
land with autonomic institutions. 8 

One would imagine that Napoleon was a calm and phil- 
osophic constructor of government, aiming at what was 
best, or what he thought was best, for France. In fact, 
he was only another Louis XIV. with greater intellect 
and more modern and scientific methods. The object 
aimed at and the result were the same. Neither cared 
anything for France or Frenchmen except as they served 

1 Introduction, p. 33. * Ibid., p. 34. * Ibid. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 337 

his purpose ; and the purpose of both was despotic rule 
and military power. Napoleon, with the remorselessness 
of an Eastern sultan, carried the system to much higher 
perfection, and succeeded within fifteen years in bringing 
France to a condition of humiliation and subjection to 
foreign conquerors which Louis XIV. attained less per- 
fectly in three-quarters of a century. 

But on his return from Egypt in 1779, ten years of revolution had 
made anarchy and chaos so complete that his genius alone could 
have saved the integral existence of France; and when mortals are 
endowed with superhuman power on rare occasions in the world's 
history they are not mild doctrinaires, nor would they be able to 
cope with the crises which produced them were their qualities those 
which befit benign constitutional organizers. 

That in great political crises nations are brought 
through their difficulties by individuals is a doctrine to 
which we heartily subscribe. The question which we 
hold to be still open, and which it rests with popular 
government to solve, is whether those individuals shall 
be of the type of Frederick the Great, Napoleon, or even 
Bismarck, or of that of William of Orange, Cavour and 
Victor Emmanuel, Washington and Lincoln. 

It is, however, futile to dream of what Napoleon might have done, 
especially as subsequent events indicate that autonomic institutions 
would not have suited the French, while it is certain that the central- 
ized system does conform to their wants and ideas. Proofs of this 
fact abound. 1 

We make bold to assert that the proofs submitted are 
no proofs at all. 

In the first place, while several times in the century the French 
have overturned dynasties and engaged in civil war, when the fray 
was over and the new regime set up, though the government of the 
country was unarmed and entirely with opponents of the previous 
dispensation, a material change was never essayed in the essential 
fabric of the Napoleonic construction. 2 

*Ibid. a Ibid. , p. 35. .;• 



338 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

How could it possibly have been ? A system consoli- 
dated by centuries and fastened upon an entire nation 
could not be changed to order like a coat. Hear our 
author himself in another place. 

Even if the habits of French politicians could be suddenly trans- 
formed, it would take some years to habituate the nation to the 
change. To establish the party system it would not suffice for minis- 
ters to cease from intriguing against their own colleagues, or even for 
cabinets to fall less often and for less incoherent reasons. It is not 
by transactions within a legislature that national tradition is altered. 
It is in the country and at the ballot-box that parties are organized 
and fortified. 1 

But the country cannot do such work of itself. For 
that are needed statesmen of genius and training, ani- 
mated by faith in popular government. The Napoleonic 
system had closed the door of public life to such men and 
they could not be improvised. Is it any wonder that a 
union of such centralized administration with a govern- 
ment by a legislature should produce an abortion ? 

" We are marching," said M. Reinach, " towards a state of things 
like that which exists in the United States, towards the formation of 
a narrow caste of politicians, side by side with the abstention, grow- 
ing daily more complete, of thinkers and men who make others 
think." 2 

Secondly, though treatises on decentralization abound in France, 
they show that the boldest practical conceptions leave the centralized 
system untouched from an English point of view. 3 

It is a peculiarity of the English system that its out- 
ward form furnishes very little key to its inner working. 
The principles which have been worked out in the last 
two centuries, to the unspeakable benefit of mankind, have 
grown up almost unconsciously. It is only within the last 
fifty years that men like Mill, May, Bryce, Bagehot, and 
Todd have subjected them to scientific analysis, while the 

i Vol. II., Book IV., Chap. VI., p. 443. 

a Vol. II., Book III., p. 155. * Introduction, p. 35. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 339 

relations of local and central government are still awaiting 
further examination. We have seen the lamentable fail- 
ure of the French statesmen in the attempt to apply those 
principles in the period of 1840-1848. Does the failure 
of their successors in another and far more nearly success- 
ful attempt prove that the principles are unsuited to the 
French nation ? 

In the third place, the scant interest taken by French citizens in 
the important local governing bodies which they possess shows that 
the majority like to depend on the central power for their adminis- 
tration. . . . While writing these introductory pages I attended the 
opening session of a conseil-general in a provincial capital. 

Reasons are given why it was of special interest. 

But taxpayer and admiring fellow-citizen alike remained unstirred. 
Five non-official spectators alone were attracted to the prefecture ; two 
of them w r ere reporters, two were experts employed in a technical 
matter, and the un compelled audience consisted of one member of 
the public, who was a stranger to the department and to France. 1 

A population in that condition is an easy prey to any 
despotism imposed from the outside. They have never 
been taught anything else. 

Then, again, there is no public opinion in France, as we understand 
it in England, or, at all events, no means of expressing it. The spirit 
of the press of the whole country, excepting in matters of local interest, 
is regulated by the journalists of Paris, who interpret merely the sen- 
timents, sometimes conflicting, sometimes unanimous, of the boule- 
vards, and the newspaper is not used by the public for airing its 
grievances by means of letters to the editor. Moreover the legisla- 
ture, as we shall see, though called a parliament, is not utilized as a 
parliamentary people would make use of it, for quietly redressing the 
grievances of the day; questions and deputations to ministers, peti- 
tions to the two houses, pledges demanded of members, and, in fine, 
all methods of constitutional agitation are unpractised in France. 2 

How is it shown that this is owing to the character of 
the people rather than to generations of training ? 

i Ibid, . ... 2 Vol. I., Book I., Chap. II., p. 137. 



340 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

A fourth sign of the suitability of the centralized system to the 
French temperament is, that not only it provokes no popular opposi- 
tion but its existence is approved by almost every Frenchman of 
eminence; of the great class which takes no part in politics and 
which brings the highest credit on the nation. Philosophers and 
artists, men of science and men of business, of various views on social 
and ecclesiastical questions, are generally unanimous in holding that 
the centralized fabric is necessary to the existence of France as a 
tranquil country, in which art, letters, research, or riches may be 
pursued. 1 

Yet France, during the last century, is not especially 
distinguished for its tranquillity, nor have the monarchical 
periods contributed any more to it than the republican. 
It is for the most part incidentally that Mr. Bodley points 
out the evils which have grown up under this centralized 
and irresponsible government, — the total want of sympa- 
thy and confidence between classes, of any general public 
opinion, and of any trust in the government as, if not 
perfect, at least trying impartially to do the best it can 
for the public interests ; the seething discontent which 
from time to time breaks out in violence, is repressed by 
violence in turn, and trains the people to believe that 
force is the only basis of society; and as a consequence 
of this the general disregard of, and indifference to, indi- 
vidual liberty. 

If the French had not this instinct of submission to an arbitrary 
ruler, they would have shaken off the mechanism of autocracy which 
they have voluntarily endured under their democratic Republic, as 
though to preserve it for the hand of a master when they set one 
up again. From our English point of view the increased degree of 
liberty which the Republic, as compared with the Second Empire, 
permits the French to enjoy is inconsiderable. The censorship of the 
press has been reduced and there is no more restriction on the publi- 
cation of legislative proceedings. But there is no liberty of associa- 
tion, no liberty of assembly or of procession in the streets ; liberty of 
public meeting is subject to paternal regulation; a citizen's domicile 
is not inviolate, and if charged with a crime he is submitted to pro- 

1 Introduction, p. 36. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 341 

ceedings which to us suggest the usages of the Stuarts. More than 
that, the whole machinery of centralized administration is preserved 
in the masterful form which it took from the hands of Napoleon. 1 

And because the French, in their struggles to obtain a 
working constitution, have not been able to reverse the 
whole procedure of centuries, therefore they are unfitted 
and have no desire for free government. 

The critical spirit which made the French Revolution has never 
ceased to be active ; but under the Third Republic it has taken the 
form of pessimism, acute and contagious, — affecting every portion 
of the nation, excepting that which goes resolutely about its work 
without troubling itself to think whether France is well or ill gov- 
erned, or what is the precise nature of her prestige among the powers 
of Europe (p. 25). The combination of parliamentary government with 
centralization is a potent cause of the pessimism of French political 
writers. They see that the general result is unsatisfactory and that 
some of the chief elements of the governmental system are immovable, 
manhood suffrage being as permanently established as the centralized 
administration. Thus the only hope of an improved state of things 
lies in the prospect of the voice of the nation delegating its powers to 
an authoritative hand instead of to parliamentary representatives. 
But apart from the retrograde character of such a change, which 
would sadden doctrinaires, no leader capable of touching popular 
sympathies has shown the faintest sign of existence. When he 
arises he may be the bon tyran of M. Renan's optimist dreams; but, 
on the other hand, there is always the fear of a shallow military 
adventurer being disastrously hailed to rescue the land from parlia- 
mentary anarchy. Moreover, the most definite prospect of ending 
this state of things rests in the vague future, which lies beyond the 
issues of the next European war; and war is so dreaded by the French, 
in spite of their martial temperament, that rather than contemplate 
its horrors they would submit to an infinitely worse regime than the 
present, to the defects of which the great mass of the population is 
absolutely indifferent 2 (p. 39). 

Our reasoning is that the methods of carrying on gov- 
ernment both in France and the United States are such as 
to suppress all leadership until at last it comes by violence. 

In reading the following it must be remembered that 
for the first time in France the press has been absolutely 

1 Vol. II., Book IV., Chap. III., p. 397. * Introduction. 



342 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

free, and that its license has as yet failed to produce revo- 
lution. 

At the other side of the moral and intellectual scale there is a moat 
dissimilar pessimistic influence now at work in France. The violent 
press ought to have no effect on the mind of the impartial student of 
French institutions, but he has to take into consideration its wide- 
spread power for evil. Every day throughout France are distributed 
tens of thousands of cheap journals, which, expressing every shade of 
public opinion from the doctrine of the Commune to reactionary 
clericalism, have one feature in common, — the scurrilous aspersion of 
public men. Sometimes the objects of their fury are not worthy of 
the high position to which the hazards of an ill-combined political 
system have raised them ; but as a rule the defamatory clamor has 
little relation with the real actions or character of the persons de- 
nounced. At all events it is demoralizing for the nation that those 
who read the newspapers in town and country should daily be told 
that all Frenchmen in authority, whether politicians, diplomatists, 
judges, or ecclesiastics, are tainted with vice or even branded with 
crime. The evil is spreading, as there are provincial journals which 
outdo the most abusive prints of the boulevard in denouncing the 
gallant chiefs of the army. 1 

The writer goes on to say that even the journals, maga- 
zines, and books of high authority take on the same tone 
of pessimism. It will be seen from the last sentence 
quoted which way Mr. Bodley's eyes turn for relief from 
the existing situation. The recent trials of Zola and 
Reinach point strongly towards the power which the army 
wields in the government and to the displacement of the 
vacillating chambers by a military ruler. Of course such 
a one would reach power only through war, and a success- 
ful war at that. Is it surprising that pessimism should be 
the prevailing tone of the whole society ? 2 

It may be said, 4 You refuse to accept Mr. Bodley's prem- 
ises and reject his conclusions. What substitute do you 

1 Introduction, p. 42. 

2 Yet these very trials show how free discussion and the force of public 
opinion are gaining ground in France, while exactly the reverse ia taking 
place in Germany. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 343 

suggest and how do you imagine that the future of France 
might be modified ? ' It is a fair question and we will 
attempt the answer, not with reference to the future of 
France, but from its bearing upon parallel circumstances 
in the United States. That France requires an authori- 
tative ruler is no doubt true, as for that matter every 
democracy must. But why need it be a military one ? 
A civil magistrate, sustained by the voice of the people 
and using his power for the gradual strengthening and 
modifying of their institutions in the direction of popular 
rule, would answer the purpose just as well and open the 
way to a better future. 

How can such a man be found ? The simplest method 
would be to give the President an absolute power of disso- 
lution of the chamber of representatives. Even now a 
direct appeal to the Senate would doubtless enable him to 
do that in case of a defeat of a ministry of his choice. An 
address issued directly to the people, explaining the cir- 
cumstances and the importance of a decision, and asking 
them to send deputies pledged to support his policy would 
probably bring a response, and at any rate form a first 
step towards leading the people to act together, just as 
the appeals of the first and third Napoleons actually did. 
Two or three such dissolutions carefully managed would 
begin to develop a public opinion of the right sort, to 
replace the perverse one which it seems is already building 
up under an irresponsible and violent press. The abuse 
of journals would shatter itself against the calm and tem- 
perate arguments of the President, and the enthusiasm for 
personality, nowhere greater than in France, would be 
brought to bear without the disastrous accompaniment of 
military glory. In the hands of men like Carnot, Casimir 
P£rier, or even M. Faure, it would have been an instru- 
ment of irresistible power. President Perier did indeed 
make a slight move in that direction. 



344 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

An attempt in this direction, when the majority of the Chamber 
voted for the revision of a judgment of the Conseil d'Etat in the 
matter of certain State agreements with the railway companies, caused 
the retirement of the second Dupuy ministry, and M. Casimir Perier 
seized the occasion of this crisis to address to the presidents of the 
houses of the legislature a letter resigning his high office, and 
indicating some of the reasons why he found its further custody intol- 
erable. The general purport of the message was that the President 
had too many responsibilities and not enough power. The Socialists' 
comment upon it was that there was logically no middle course 
between the abolition of the presidency and its conversion into a 
dictatorship ; a dilemma which would be irresistible if logic had any 
relation with the science of government. 1 

It seems plain enough that a middle course was per- 
fectly consistent both with logic and practice. If the 
President, instead of resigning, had dissolved the Chamber 
and with a full statement of the same proposition and the 
explanation of it addressed directly to the people had 
called for a new election, the future history of France 
might have been different. 

But no French ruler, except a chief of the army, seems 
ever to have imagined the power of an appeal to the 
nation. The word plebiscite has come to include the idea 
of a soldier. 

There is still another course which, if not practically 
applicable to France under present circumstances, illus- 
trates what might be done both there and in the United 
States. Suppose that the President was elected once in 
four years by the majority of the whole people, the Cham- 
ber being renewed as a whole every two years. Suppose 
that the ministry, selected from in or outside the Cham- 
ber, bore the same relation to it that they do now ; 
that the ministers did not feel at all bound to resign, 
individually or collectively, upon an adverse vote of the 
Chamber ; that they got on with the best legislation they 
could get, arguing, protesting, and appealing indirectly to 

i Ibid., Vol. I., Book II., p. 309. 



xv FRANCE — THE THIRD REPUBLIC 346 

the country, and resigning only individually at the request 
of the President. Parties would crystallize and harden. 
Rival candidates, with positive policies, would compete be- 
fore the people. Sober and conservative newspapers would 
join in forming a public opinion, which would be aroused 
and educated. Public men would come forward and at- 
tract public attention through debate and skill in the 
Assembly ; peasants and shopkeepers, as well as scientific, 
literary, and professional men would be ready to take their 
share in politics. A civil president with the country at 
his back might be able to control even the army. 

This review of the present political situation of France 
cannot be left without some reference to the Dreyfus case. 
The facts upon the surface seem to be of the most foolish 
and childish character. A subordinate officer is accused 
of having sold to German agents a military document, of 
which it is difficult for the non-military mind to see the 
overwhelming importance. Tried by a secret court mar- 
tial, he is found guilty, partly upon evidence which, as since 
made public, appears to be of the flimsiest kind, and partly 
upon the assurance of high military officials, upon their 
honor, that they know him to be guilty. Having been 
convicted, he is paraded before a large body of troops, 
stripped of his uniform and insignia, and marched round 
the lines in this dishevelled state, all the while maintaining 
his erect bearing and firmly asserting his innocence. Ex- 
pelled thus from the army, he is condemned to exile and 
imprisonment in a tropical fortress, which was supposed 
and probably meant to be equivalent to a sentence of death ; 
notwithstanding which he has remained for some years in 
excellent health. The unfortunate officer was further a 
Jew, and the violent race prejudice which exists in Europe 
was brought to bear against him. 

The next step was that suspicion of the act of treason 



346 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

was transferred to another officer. But, though of very 
bad character, he was nominally a Christian, and as his 
conviction would have stultified some leading officers of 
the army, he was acquitted. It appeared, however, that 
the only document of any importance upon which Dreyfus 
was convicted was a forgery, and the officer chiefly con- 
nected with it made confession and committed suicide. 

Meantime the famous novelist, Zola, had taken up the 
case and denounced the court martial and the government 
in unsparing terms. Indicted and brought to trial for 
criminal libel, he found his counsel and witnesses brow- 
beaten, the evidence suppressed, and the whole weight of 
the leaders of the army applied to bend the court to their 
purposes. Zola was condemned to fine and imprisonment. 

But another and the most interesting figure had ap- 
peared. Colonel Picquart, the head of the Secret Intel- 
ligence Department, was convinced of the innocence of 
Dreyfus, and thought it his duty to proclaim it. Through- 
out the Zola trial he manfully adhered to his position. 
To get rid of him he was sent with insufficient support to 
a dangerous and unhealthy station in Africa, but he sur- 
vived to return. He was then arrested on technical 
charges and sent to prison, taking public occasion to say 
that if he was found dead in his cell, it must be understood 
that he did not commit suicide. 

Outside opinion, however, was now becoming aroused, 
and an appeal was made to the Court of Cassation to inter- 
fere and stay the proceedings against Colonel Picquart. 
It was a direct trial of strength between the civil and 
military power; the ministr}^, as usual, taking an attitude 
of trimming, and throwing the responsibility upon the 
court. The latest accounts are that the Court of Cassa- 
tion has taken a firm stand at least for delay. 

What is the real significance of that which is appar- 
ently a squabble over a subordinate officer and over mean- 



xv FRANCE— THE THIRD REPUBLIC 347 

ingless details ? Why does a whole people get so excited 
over the case of a single individual? In the first place, 
they have nothing else to get excited about. The Presi- 
dent of the Republic is merely a figure-head. The pro- 
ceedings of the chambers, so far as they have any meaning, 
are secret, and all that the public can see are the quarrels 
of factions, without leadership and without policy, their 
only object being to set up and pull down ministers and to 
get possession of power, while the ministers are what we 
have seen. The only things upon which the public can 
concentrate its attention and vent its discontent are such 
unhealthy topics as the financial operations of M. Wilson, 
the Panama scandal, and the Dreyfus case. 

Secondly, the outcry against the Jew is an expression of 
the hatred of the multitude for the bourgeois, the holders 
of capital. In the distrust and suspicion between classes 
which are the growth of centuries, hostility and violence 
take the place of cooperation for the common good. 

Again, it must be remembered that the army is the hope 
of all classes. To the multitude it represents safety from 
foreign attack and the prospect of revenge upon Germany. 
To the owners of property it seems the only defence 
against outbreaks like those of 1848 and the Commune. 
To all it presents in the midst of political chaos an example 
of order, subordination, discipline, and above all personality. 
To all appearance it is the only source from which the 
one necessity of the future, a man, can come forth. The 
indications point to a Robespierre, or a Napoleon, modi- 
fied by the changed circumstances, as not far below the 
horizon. 

On the other hand, hopeful signs are not wanting. 
That with freedom of the press peace has thus far been 
preserved is something new in the history of France, and 
there is evidence that an enlightened public opinion is 
being gradually developed. Take the following : 



348 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap.xt 

There are judges in Paris. The calm and dignified action of the 
Court of Cassation in ordering a stay of proceedings in the court 
martial of Colonel Picquart is a reassertion of the civil power over the 
military, which the best friends of France have been hoping for, and 
the best men of France have petitioned for. Fifteen columns of 
VAurore were filled with the names of the most distinguished French- 
men, protesting against the attempt of the military authorities to 
anticipate the findings of the civil courts in the case of Colonel 
Picquart. Professors by the hundred signed, and professional men of 
all ranks, and engineers and authors and artists — a tremendous array 
of Brunetiere's despised " intellectuals." Women also figured in the 
list, among the first being the widow of Michelet, who telegraphed, 
u Since women are allowed to sign, put my name down quickly." The 
revolution of opinion, in fact, among those whose opinion is worth con- 
sidering appears to be complete. Professor Seignobos was one of the 
signers, and when he went to lecture at the Sorbonne, the next day 
after the publication of the lists, the students rose and cheered him 
enthusiastically. It was the same students who, a few months ago, 
were howling at Zola and frantically cheering for the army. 1 

If that which has been the object from the first, the re- 
vision of the Dreyfus case, can be successfully brought 
about ; if that officer can be brought home, can have a fair 
and public trial and can be acquitted and set free, it can 
truly be said that no nation in the world has made a 
greater proportionate progress in true liberty and the 
justification of popular government than the French. 

1 New York Nation, December 15, 1898. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

"DEFORE proceeding to examine the political history 
-*-^ and circumstances of the United States, it may be 
well to sum up the conclusions at which we have thus far 
arrived. At the fall of the Roman Empire Europe was 
covered with a number of more or less barbarous tribes, 
fighting desperately for existence. The first ray of light 
upon this darkness came from the empire of Charlemagne 
enforcing peace over a wide area. At his death that em- 
pire was dissolved, and Europe was plunged into a second 
night of feudalism. A number of great lords, who might 
almost be called petty kings, protected their own followers 
as far as they were able, but plundered everybody else 
and bent all their energies to the destruction of each 
other ; a condition of misery which in reading the history 
of those times the mind finds itself hardly able to con- 
ceive. 

The next step in progress was made by consolidating 
the different countries of Europe into monarchies of 
which the rulers were able with the aid of the people 
to reduce the nobles to subjection and suppress all power 
but their own. This was an immense advance, and 
brought out the fact that strong executive power is the 
first condition of existence for civilized society. 

Executive power, however, which was too strong and 
irresponsible, developed a new set of evils, and the next 
stage of evolution to be entered upon was that at once of 
maintaining and limiting this executive power at the point 

349 



350 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

most conducive to the welfare and prosperity of nations. 
If too strong it would abuse its power to the point of 
oppression ; if too weak it would expose society to the 
still worse evils of an anarchy of contending forces. 

While Germany and Italy were unable to reach even 
the monarchical stage of advancement, England was 
already struggling with the more modern problem. The 
conflict was coeval with the Stuarts, beginning with the 
accession of James I. and ending with the flight of 
James II., that is as to the main principle, for it took 
another century and a half to work out the political 
machinery to its full development. That this conflict was 
successful was owing mainly to two causes. 

1. The insular position and freedom from invasion, and 
indeed from all foreign complications unless voluntarily 
assumed, relieved the country from the necessity of a 
standing army, and therefore from the arbitrary power of 
the Crown. The Parliament was able to make its grants 
of money dependent upon the redress of grievances of all 
kinds. It was in the enforcement of this principle that 
the nobles and the commons were led to work together, 
to share financial burdens, and to acquire that spirit of 
mutual confidence and compromise which in the next 
century stood them in such good stead. By the same 
process they were enabled to avoid the foundation and 
the predominance of a military caste, which has worked 
so disastrously upon the neighboring continent. 

2. The other cause was the separation of the English 
from the Roman Catholic Church and the expulsion of 
the religious orders. The sanctity of a Stuart as the head 
of a church was not likely to make a very deep impression, 
and the country was spared the disasters which the spirit- 
ual terrors of the Pope and the monastic element have 
inflicted upon the rest of Europe. 

But this first attempt at responsible government devel- 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 351 

oped the evil which was to make itself so widely felt, the 
absorption of all the power of government by a legis- 
lature, with its consequent anarchy, to be remedied only 
by military despotism. Through the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries was evolved by peaceful methods 
the system of strong but responsible executive govern- 
ment which has achieved perhaps more beneficent results 
than any other government which the world has yet seen. 

In France the absence of the two causes above referred 
to produced very different results. The expulsion of the 
English by Charles VII. and the Italian wars of Louis 
XII. enabled those kings to use the plea of necessity in 
maintaining a standing army and raising taxes without 
the consent of any parliament. Grievances, therefore, so 
far from being redressed, were allowed to accumulate, and 
resistance was further guarded against by the discord and 
distrust between the various classes, of which the seeds 
were carefully sown by the royal power and nurtured by 
the influence of the Romish Church, while the nobles were 
led away by military ambition or the charms of a life at 
court. 

When the explosion came the executive power was not 
reformed but simply swept away and replaced by the un- 
controlled rule of a legislature, which threw the country 
swiftly into the hands of Napoleon. For a century France 
has oscillated between anarchy and despotism, and while 
great progress has been made it cannot be said that an 
effective solution of the difficulty is anywhere in sight. 
Still the political education of the people is going on and 
is of immense importance. 

The principles thus laid down furnish a standpoint of 
the deepest interest for the study of the political history 
and circumstances of the United States. To those who 
have thus far followed the course of this work it will 
seem natural that, in passing to the government of the 



352 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

United States, the first subject of inquiry should be the 
constitution of executive power. As this work again 
does not purport to be historical, but little consideration 
will be given to the intentions of the framers of the con- 
stitutions, either of the United States or of the several 
States ; or to the historical conditions which governed 
and led up to their conclusions. The present question 
is, What form of executive power did our fathers estab- 
lish ? And how has it worked during the century which 
has since elapsed? 

^ Perhaps in no part of the Federal Constitution did the 
insight and the wisdom of the framers appear more clearly 
than in this. They might, as was proposed in the Con- 
vention, have intrusted executive power to a committee of 
three or more persons, in which case the weakness, irreso- 
lution, and want of responsibility of such a body would 
undoubtedly have brought the Union to shipwreck, if not 
in time of peace at least in such a crisis as our Civil War. 
They might have adopted a proposal to surround the 
President with a council like that of Massachusetts, or the 
Privy Council in England; but as Mr. Bryce observes, 1 
the Privy Council is a body selected as advisers by the 
sovereign, whereas any council in the United States must 
have been elected separately from the President. In that 
event one of two things must have taken place, either 
the council would have had only advisory powers, leaving 
initiation and decision entirely to the President — for 
which purpose an elected council would have been the 
worst possible instrument, — or it must have had an equal 
voice, either as a whole or individually, with the Presi- 
dent in deciding all questions of policy and administra- 
tion. Such a body could only serve to hamper and tie 
the hands of the President and divide responsibility, so as 
to conceal from the public eye the real source of good or 

1 "American Commonwealth," Chap. IX., p. 91. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 353 

evil actions and results. It would convert the President 
from being a real executive head into a mere political in- 
strument with a corresponding depreciation in the politi- 
cal quality of the men who would obtain the office. The 
theory is abundantly confirmed by the experience of Mas- 
sachusetts. 1 The members of the Convention of 1787 un- 
derstood the principle that not only the efficiency but the 
quality and the purity of executive power require that it 
should be concentrated in a single person, with every pre- 
caution for the enforcement of responsibility. 

The framers of the Constitution might, again, have pro- 
vided for the election of the President by one or both 
houses of Congress, which would have made him the mere 
instrument of parties in the legislature, somewhat as we 
have seen to be the case in France. Even at that time, 
before the French Revolution and when there was really 
no practical example but that of the Long Parliament in 
England, the leaders of the Convention understood that 
the danger of excessive power in the legislature was as 
great as in the executive, and that it was of the first im- 
portance to keep the powers largely independent of each 
other. No doubt they shrank from the idea of a direct 
election of the President by the people even with the re- 
stricted suffrage of those days. It is well known, how- 
ever, that their scheme of presidential electors has been 
neutralized in practice and that the presidential office is 
filled by popular election and must be treated of as such. 
One feature, however, still stands in the way of the com- 
plete attainment of this result, namely, the election by 
States ; that is, all the presidential electors of each State 
being chosen on a general ticket and belonging to one 
party, while the vote of the whole State is cast as a sin- 
gle unit. The effect of course is that the whole struggle 
turns upon the doubtful States, those which can be counted 

1 See post, Chap. XXII. 



354 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

on to give a majority to either party being almost wholly 
neglected. The electoral vote thus differs more or less 
and sometimes very largely from the popular vote. 1 

In 1884 the whole 36 votes of New York State were 
cast for Mr. Cleveland, although his popular majority in 
that State, out of a poll of over 1,100,000, was just over 
1100. And as those 36 votes turned the election, it was 
a majority of only 1100 which determined the issue of the 
struggle over the whole Union in which nearly 10,000,000 
votes were given. 2 

But even this feature of a vote by States has its advan- 
tages, as providing more certainly for a decision when the 
popular vote is nearly balanced, instead of allowing the 
election to go to the House of Representatives. 3 When 

1 Thus in 1860, the last election before the war, out of 

a total popular vote of 4,680,193 

Abraham Lincoln had 1,866,452 

Leaving for other candidates 2,813,741 

While his electoral vote was 180 against 123. 

In 1880, out of a total vote of 9,218,251 

James A. Garfield had 4,454,416 

Leaving for other candidates 4,763,835 

The electoral vote for Mr. Garfield being 214 against 155. 

In 1892, out of a total vote of 12,077,657 

Grover Cleveland had 5,554,226 

Leaving for other candidates 6,523,431 

The electoral votes for Mr. Cleveland were 277 against 167, though of 
the minority 22 were for a third candidate. 

In 1896 out of a total vote of 13,923,369 

1 William McKinley had . . . . ' . . . 7,104,779 

Leaving for other candidates 6,818,590 

The electoral votes for Mr. McKinley were 271 against 176. 

2 Bryce, "American Commonwealth," Chap. V., p. 41. 

8 By Article XII. of the Constitution of the United States, the person 
elected President must have a majority of the electoral votes, failing 
which the choice between the three persons having the highest number 
of votes goes to the House of Representatives. If a majority of the 
popular vote had been required, more than half of the elections since 
1844 would have been thrown into the House, to the great detriment of 
the popular interest and control. The electoral vote acts as a kind of 
second election when the results of the first are known. It would evi- 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 355 

public opinion is evenly divided it is much less important 
who is chosen than that there should be a choice. 

In speaking of the mode provided for the election of 
a President, Mr. Bryce says : — 

To have left the choice of the chief magistrate to a direct popular 
vote over the whole country would have raised a dangerous excite- 
ment, and would have given too much encouragement to candidates 
of merely popular gifts. 1 

After stating the still stronger objections to an election 
by Congress, he adds : — 

Hence the device of a double election was adopted, perhaps with 
a faint reminiscence of the methods by which the doge was still 
chosen at Venice and the emperor in Germany. 

By his own admission, as well as that of all writers upon 
the subject, this element has been practically eliminated, 
and we stand face to face with the dangerous excitement 
of the popular vote, modified only, if that is the effect, by 
the vote by States. 

We may pass over the period to 1840, when it might 
be said that the country was too scantily peopled and the 
conditions of life too nearly equal to furnish an adequate 
test, and again the period to 1860, during which the con- 
flict with slavery formed the turning-point of the elections. 
But how has it been with the civic trials of the last thirty 
years? First on the list stands Abraham Lincoln, second 

dently be difficult to arrange that the popular vote should give a majority 
at the first ballot, while a second would be nearly impossible. Perhaps a 
choice of electors by districts instead of States might be provided with 
the same effect as now and yet approach more nearly to the popular 
vote. Against this, however, it may be urged that the present method 
preserves the influence and power of the separate State governments, 
upon the importance of which we have dwelt elsewhere (Chap. XXIII.). 
Under certain conditions the grouping of the States might be as important 
as the popular vote. At all events, the happy intervention of the electoral 
vote bears striking testimony to the success of the original plan of the 
Constitution. 

1 " American Commonwealth," Chap. V., p. 37. 



356 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

only to Washington in the history of the country, and 
whose name need fear comparison with no ruler in the 
world. The list then comprises Johnson, Grant, Hayes, 
Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley. 
As regards personal character there is certainly little left 
to be desired. Political criticism of the present chief 
executive might be charged with party bias, but so much 
may be said that like most of the others he illustrates the 
want of adequate machinery and procedure for testing 
candidates in previous public life. 

While of course party views must differ, one may be 
permitted to express admiration of the popular instinct 
which broke the line of Republican succession at James G. 
Blaine. With regard to these eight presidents, not even 
by hostile parties has there been any charge of want of 
purity of intention in relation to public affairs. Only 
once, in a case of misplaced though perfectly sincere con- 
fidence, the selection of a secretary of war by President 
Grant, has there been any approach to public scandal as 
to a cabinet officer. The character of the federal public 
service will at least fairly bear comparison with that 
of any other country. So far as the work was placed 
before the mass of public opinion it has done that work 
well. To show wherein and why the work has failed 
will require the introduction of other considerations. 

Mr. Bryce has devoted one of his chapters to the ques- 
tion, Why Great Men are not chosen Presidents? 

Europeans often ask and Americans do not always explain how it 
happens that this great office, the greatest in the world, unless we 
except the papacy, to which any man can rise by his own merits, is 
not more frequently filled by great and striking men? 1 

A concise answer may be found in the old adage, that 
" It is of no use to set a man to do a boy's work." The 

l Chap. VIII., p. 73. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 357 

old Gresham law of currency lays down the maxim that 
the poorest money which can be made to do the work of 
exchange will displace and drive out every other. In the 
same way public office will in the long run be filled by 
the poorest quality of men who can be made to fulfil its 
requirements. The people have done all it was possible 
for them to do by insisting that their Presidents should 
be men of high personal character. It was quite beyond 
their power to achieve that great men should be always 
furnished for a place which was nothing but an instru- 
ment of party politics. 

An impression prevails abroad that the President of the 
United States has greater power than any European 
sovereign. This is even apparently true only in one par- 
ticular, — appointments to office. But in so far as these 
appointments have not been taken out of his hands by 
civil service reform, he has to use them in strict subordi- 
nation to the demands of members of his party in both 
houses of Congress. In all other respects his recognized 
power is confined within very narrow limits. In matters 
of legislation he has no voice whatever beyond general 
recommendations, such as are open to any citizen, and 
to which Congress pays little or no attention. In fact, 
that body resents anything like an expression of opinion 
from the President. 1 

1 Thus in 1894, when President Cleveland wrote a letter to Mr. Wilson, 
Chairman of Ways and Means, as to the details of the tariff, it was re- 
garded in Congress, and to a considerable extent by the press, as an 
unwarrantable departure from his proper functions. In positive and 
direct executive action for the benefit of the whole nation, as in the case 
of the Hawaiian revolution, the maintenance of the public credit by the 
sale of bonds, the suppression of the Chicago riots, the extension of the 
civil service rules to a large number of the minor executive offices, Mr. 
Cleveland may be said to have done more than any president since Abra- 
ham Lincoln. But it was these assertions of executive independence 
which cost him the favor not merely of his political opponents, but of the 
members of his own party in Congress, and he quitted office without a 
word of public commendation from either side. Only in the case where 



358 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In all matters of finance neither the President nor any 
member of his Cabinet has any direct voice of any kind. 
Congress appropriates whatever money and for whatever 
purpose it pleases, and orders even the details of revenue 
and expenditure without the slightest reference to the 
executive, unless one of the secretaries is summoned, or 
chooses to appear, before one of the committees, which 
hears him exactly as it would and does any witness from 
the mass of citizens. 

One example of the use which Congress makes of this 
power appears in the matter of salaries. Members of 
the House of Representatives, who spend the three winter 
months of one year in Washington and perhaps six months 
of the next, with no duties except attendance on commit- 
tees and the sessions of the House, receive $5000 a year. 
Senators, with hardly more duties and claiming for them- 
selves rank and precedence next to the President, receive 
$5000, while both senators and representatives receive 
extra payment in mileage which in some cases amounts 
to a considerable sum. The Speaker of the House and 
the Vice-President presiding over the Senate receive $8000 
each. The cabinet officers, who in the order of govern- 
ment should come next to the President, who have to 
spend the whole year in Washington, including the long 
and hot summer, with perhaps a short vacation, who have 
at least nominally the whole charge of administration and 
are absorbed in the exercise of arduous and responsible 
duties, receive $8000. The judges of the Supreme Court, 
as dignified a tribunal as any in the world, receive $10,000, 
except the Chief Justice, who has $10,500. As this whole 
matter is adjusted by Congress at its discretion, it is need- 
he was led, by whatever influences, to offer a gross insult to Great Brit- 
ain, such as would not have been borne for a moment by this country 
from any other without prompt resentment, did he receive the unanimous 
support of both houses. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OE THE UNITED STATES 359 

less to point out what this implies as to the spirit of the 
legislature. 

The treaty-making power is also one of the supposed 
prerogatives of the President. But treaties require the 
approval of two-thirds of the Senate, and as it would be 
very mortifying to the President to have a treaty to which 
he had formally given his consent rejected by the Senate, 
he must be always in close communication with, and even 
subjection to, the Foreign Affairs Committee of that body. 1 
The House, moreover, with its control of appropriations, 
has to be reckoned with. 

The power to declare war belongs to Congress, but the 
President may, as Polk did in 1845 and 1846, bring affairs 
to a point at which it is hard for Congress to refrain from 
the declaration. And here is just the evil of the Presi- 
dent's position. Of open and manly power to obtain 
legislation necessary for carrying on the government and 
for defending it or himself or the nation from the attacks 
of private and party interests, he has almost literally 
nothing. His only available instrument for these pur- 
poses is personal solicitation and intrigue with the mem- 
bers of the two houses. It is the process known as 
" lobbying," in which he stands on precisely the same 
footing as the promoters of private interests, or even at a 
disadvantage, as the jealousy of the legislature leads it 
not to conform to the wishes of the executive, unless for 
purposes of party or personal gain. The only superiority 
which the President possesses over any private schemer is 
in the use of the offices. With these he can buy support. 
And evil as the effect of the practice has been and is, a 
system of civil service reform which should entirely with- 
draw the power of appointment from the President would 
reduce him to an absolute cipher in the government. The 

1 Illustrated in the treaty with Spain, the Chairman and two other 
members of the Committee being on the Peace Commission. 



360 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

temptation to such irregular use of power is greatly 
strengthened by the fact that both the President and his 
Cabinet are beyond the reach of Congress except by a 
process of impeachment. 1 

In the British Parliament any member can address an 
inquiry at the proper time to any member of the ministry, 
and any act which should imply improper motives of 
administration would be at imminent risk of public expos- 
ure. It is precisely this public and personal responsibility 
which has wrought such a wonderful change since the 
beginning of this century in the conduct of British affairs. 
In the United States there is no such provision for the 
enforcement of responsibility. While individual mem- 
bers of Congress do crowd into the departments, at once 
dictating and demanding information in the most exas- 
perating manner, there is no power of public inquiry into 
the conduct of the executive except by a resolution of a 
majority of either house, referred to a standing or a 
special investigating committee. That committee, made 
up on party grounds, reports after a greater or less inter- 
val, when public attention has been diverted from the 
subject and without any public hearing of the executive 
at all. These two points need to be kept clearly in view : 
that the President and Cabinet have no legitimate power 
except as mechanical agents under the direction of Con- 
gress ; and that for any but very great abuse of power 
they are shielded from responsibility, if they keep on good 
terms with the leading politicians of the two houses. 2 

i Thus in the last half of 1859 and the first of 1860 Floyd, Secretary 
of War under Buchanan, transferred large amounts of arms and ammuni- 
tion from Northern to Southern arsenals, yet no public notice was taken 
of it till the report of the Committee on Military Affairs in February, 1861. 

2 The consciousness of this failure of responsibility has doubtless much 
to do with the popular prejudice, which has almost reached the point of 
superstition, against a third term for any President. So far has this gone 
that while Mr. Cleveland held the office from 1884 to 1888, and after an 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 361 

From these conditions it results that the public at large 
know nothing at all about the character or conduct of the 
President except what they learn from the gossip of the 
newspapers or the talk, public or private, of members of 
Congress. It is a well-established though unwritten cus- 
tom, that the President shall never address his constitu- 
ents, that is, the people of the nation directly, at least as 
to the details of public affairs, and like most unwritten 
customs this has a solid foundation. If the President, the 
nominal head of the nation and the only man chosen by 
the votes of the whole, should address the people, he would 
be obliged to have a positive policy, to tell them what he 
intends to do and how and why he proposes to do it. But 
he cannot have a policy, because he has no means of en- 
forcing it. An intention to do anything would be wholly 
futile as well as any plan for doing it, because the initia- 
tive lies wholly with Congress and the President is only 
the instrument for carrying out whatever orders Congress 
may give him. It follows almost inevitably that all his 
utterances must take the form of requests or recommenda- 
tions to Congress, which except by his use of the offices he 
has no more power to enforce than any citizen. 

interval of four years again from 1892 to 1896, a circumstance which has 
never before occurred to any President, the bugbear of a third term was 
used to defeat the nomination of probably the best and certainly the most 
available candidate whom the Democratic party had to offer. It is well 
known that this prejudice had its origin in the refusal of Washington to 
accept a third nomination, which was probably owing to the scandalous 
quarrels between the members of his Cabinet and the outrageous abuse 
heaped upon the great patriot in connection with Jay's treaty. There 
seems to be no reason why, if the American people have secured a good 
servant, they should not, like any other person or corporation, keep him as 
long as he is useful. That would probably be felt to be true if the people 
had any adequate means of information as to the character and actions of 
the man whom they choose. But when it appears that not only the office 
of President but the whole organization of Congress may be to any extent, 
and certainly is to a great extent, used as a cloak to cover any amount 
of secret intrigue, the feeling is not unnatural that there should be a gen- 
eral house- cleaning at least once in eight years. 



362 THE LESSON Otf POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Because, therefore, the President, except by message to 
Congress, is never heard in public, either by himself or his 
agents, either in defence of what he wants or in opposition 
to what he does not want, he remains completely hidden 
from the popular view. 

The view of the President's power here taken will not 
be fully accepted even in this country. 1 One writer 2 
devotes a chapter to Absolute Power as an American 
Institution. He says there are but two of the leading 
powers of the world which represent political absolutism, 
enforced by one man's hand, namely Russia and the 
United States, and that "once elected, the President, 
during half the year, is the United States more truly than 
Louis XIV. was France." That may be true potentially, 
but it is not historically. Andrew Jackson set up his will 
against Congress in some details, and it has been the theme 
of constitutional writers ever since. During the Civil 
War we lived with the expressed assent of Congress and 
the tacit consent of the people under a military despotism. 
But what President since has attempted anything of the 
kind except Andrew Johnson, with results which were a 
sufficient warning to his successors? Mr. Cleveland's 
experiments were hardly more encouraging. 

Mr. Baldwin adds: " Our ultimate despot is the people 
of the United States ; but they are the knights in armor 

1 It may be said that it is flatly contradicted by the events of the year 
1898. But the contradiction is only apparent. The President acted 
throughout as the mouthpiece of Congress. In fact, from the outset, he 
assumed the attitude in the Spanish question of not desiring either war or 
conquest, but of yielding to the wish of the country ; while he looked to 
Congress and the newspapers as the exponent of that wish. A year before, 
Speaker Reed was supposed to be omnipotent in the House of Representa- 
tives. But the moment he undertook to oppose the decided will of that 
body, it passed over him like a locomotive. 

Nor is the force of this reasoning weakened by the undisguised exertion 
of social and personal influence by the President with senators and others 
to induce them to give the lead which he was prepared to follow. 

2 Simeon E. Baldwin, "Modern Political Institutions." 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 363 

that from generation to generation may slumber in the 
enchanted chambers of the eternal hills." It is precisely 
this gigantic force, forming the real basis of the President's 
power, kept uninformed as to public affairs, regarding the 
government with increasing distrust and suspicion, and 
without responsible guides or leaders, which is in danger 
of volcanic action. As long as President and people alike 
are content to regard Congress as the ruling power in the 
government, the grasping ambition of that body will know 
no bounds, though it will follow the President blindly 
enough if he will consent to lead in the direction of its 
passions and the private interests which control it. But 
when the impotence of Congress to govern becomes too 
clearly manifest, when wrath and contempt are the only 
feelings with which it is regarded by the people, then the 
real power of the President, — or of the forces which con- 
trol him equally with the Tsar of Russia, — backed by the 
people, will make itself felt. The only thing which can 
avert this is a readjustment of the relations between the 
two branches, with public and personal responsibility on 
both sides. 

Some quotations from another writer 1 will indicate an 
idea sometimes held of the President's position. Mr. Ford 
magnifies the office from the start. 

The precautions taken by the f ramers of the Constitution in behalf 
of the presidency were so effectual that Congress was made an incu- 
rably deficient and inferior organ of the government. 2 

If that was so, we hold that the lawmaking power and 
the control of the finances have enabled Congress to reverse 
this situation. 

As the nation develops and the people increase their qualifications 
for self-government, it will be seen that they will lay hold of the 

1 Henry Jones Ford, " Rise and Growth of American Politics." 

2 p. 65. 



364 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

presidency as the only organ sufficient for the exercise of their 
sovereignty. 1 

With the closing proposition we fully agree, but it will 
only be when they have lost confidence in and the disposi- 
tion to submit to Congress, and openly support the Presi- 
dent in a direct conflict with that body, involving one of 
two results to be discussed later. 

Mr. Ford bases his view of the President's position upon 

1. His command of the administrative system, includ- 
ing control of the offices and the initiative of administra- 
tive work. 

2. His veto power. 

3. The fact that by the elimination of any independent 
action by the presidential electors he has become the direct 
agent of the national popular will. 

Civil service reform has taken the offices largely out of 
the President's control, but even at the height of his power 
in this respect it was clearly established that he must use 
the appointments to office in obedience to the dictates of 
party, and not for the benefit of administration or of the 
people at large. It is just the same with a long line of 
apparently arbitrary administrative acts enumerated by 
Mr. Ford, — the purchase of Louisiana by Jefferson, the 
independent treasury system introduced under Van Buren, 
the annexation of Texas under Tyler, tariff reform and 
the Mexican War under Polk, the conduct of the slavery 
struggle under Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan. All these 
point to the anarchy and impotence for government on the 
part of Congress which left the initiative open, and this 
was decided by party intrigue much more than by any 
reference to the wishes or the welfare of the people of the 
United States as a whole. As to executive power under 
Lincoln, it was a clear case of abdication of power by 
Congress under panic. 

1 Ford, p. 55. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 365 

With reference to subsequent presidents, Mr. Ford him- 
self furnishes the counter argument. 

Such is the strength of the office that, if he makes a sincere and 
resolute use of its resources, at the same time cherishing his party- 
connection, he can as a rule carry his party with him, because of the 
powerful interests which impel it to occupy ground taken for it by the 
administration. 1 

That is to say, if he will adapt his executive action to 
party interest, he will be left a free hand. Indeed, we 
may go farther than that, and say that if he conforms to 
the wishes and interests of Congress as a whole, without 
regard to party, he will meet with very little opposition of 
any kind. But let him undertake any policy in the inter- 
est of the people as a whole against the private and party 
interests which rule Congress and he will speedily come to 
a realizing sense of his position. 

The strong disposition of Congress to extend the scope of federal 
duty powerfully stimulates the development of presidential authority. 

The fallacy here is in substituting the word ' presiden- 
tial' for a repetition of 'federal.' 

That authority may emerge with startling vigor from the implica- 
tions of laws enacted without any idea of producing such results. In 
assuming to regulate interstate commerce, Congress put upon the 
national administration the responsibility of maintaining interstate 
railroads as national highways. The significance of this never dawned 
upon the country until the railroad strikes of 1894 took place, when the 
arm of federal power was suddenly extended to suppress riot and quell 
disorder. 2 

The real extension of authority was on the part of Con- 
gress, the President being clothed with power to enforce 
its will, just as the colonel of a regiment or a collector of 
customs might have been. The establishment of the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission shows how far Congress was 

i p. 281. 2 p. 286. 



366 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

from any intention to increase the independent power of 
the President. 

The one reply which is always made to any charge of 
want of power in the President is, that he has the veto 
and this is regarded as the palladium of our liberties. 
Allusion has already been made to the futility of this 
instrument, 1 but it is worth some further consideration. 
The first use of the veto in modern times was in Poland 
about 1652. It came to mean that any single deputy 
could paralyze the action of the whole Imperial Diet by 
the formula, "I do not permit it." What the conse- 
quences were in the fate of Poland history tells only too 
sadly. In Great Britain there has been no royal veto 
since 1707, when Queen Anne refused to pass a Scotch 
militia bill. The governor of an English colony may veto 
a bill absolutely or reserve it for the decision of the Crown. 
The veto given to the French king in 1789 allowed him 
to suspend the decision of an assembly during the cur- 
rent and one succeeding sessions, but a third session could 
pass it over his veto. The present French President has no 
veto except upon subordinate councils, just as the prefects 
have upon the decisions of local councils. The French sus- 
pensory veto of 1789 was repeated in the Spanish consti- 
tution of 1812 and the Norwegian of 1814. The Swiss 
executive has no veto on the acts of the Assembly, but it 
rests with the popular vote in the referendum. In the 
United States the general principle, both in the federal 
government and in the States, except North Carolina, Ohio, 
Delaware, and Rhode Island, where no veto exists, is that 
the executive veto may be overcome by a competent pro- 
portion of the legislature, for the most part two-thirds of 
a quorum, with the provision that the act shall become a 
law unless returned by the executive within a specified 
time. 

» See Chap. III. and Chap. VIII. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 367 

It is evident that a government cannot be carried on 
by negatives. That the head of a great system of admin- 
istration should be obliged to sit waiting till a large body 
of men, in no wise responsible for that administration 
and with each of those men separately under strong 
pressure from local and private interests, can come to an 
agreement as to the rules under which that administra- 
tion shall be carried on is almost sure to condemn it to 
impotence. It seems obvious that the head of the admin- 
istration should himself prepare the rules which he thinks 
necessary for his action and submit them to the legisla- 
ture for acceptance or rejection; in other words, that the 
veto should be applied the other way. 

Again, after a legislature has taken the trouble to de- 
bate and go through all the procedure of passing a bill, 
to have it rejected and sent back by the executive cannot 
fail to excite hostility and conflict between the two 
branches, in which the legislature, which has command of 
the purse, is certain to get the upper hand at least as long 
as peaceful methods only are employed. The French sus- 
pensory veto must have greatly increased this exaspera- 
tion, as the legislature could not know during two sessions 
whether its perhaps hardly contested decisions were to 
become law or not. 

The veto again is defective because it does not throw 
any light from the wants of administration upon the 
process of framing and upon the discussion of legislation. 
As we shall see, it leaves to the incoherence and passion, 
to the compromises and intrigues of the houses, the mak- 
ing of laws which should be free from all those conditions. 
In a word, the veto power is merely an illustration of the 
dependence of an executive upon a legislature. 

The vetoes quoted by Mr. Ford in the second point of 
his argument above alluded to are merely temporary and ^ 
partial checks. All that they indicate is that Congress 



368 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

does not employ the right methods for obtaining its ends, 
but is compelled to adopt some others. As no policy can 
be enforced, so no policy can be permanently defeated, by 
means of the veto. 

The argument for the veto may be summed up in the 
words of one writer : * — 

As parliamentary bodies are liable, notwithstanding the means of 
securing deliberation afforded by the experience of government, to act 
without deliberation, it would seem necessary that some means should 
be devised ior the protection of important public interests in such an 
event, and the executive veto is the only means for that purpose that 
has been proved by the experience of government. 

So far from this being true, not only has the veto wholly 
failed to accomplish this result, but an infinitely better 
mode of obtaining this and a great many other advan- 
tages has been devised and tested by the practice, indi- 
rectly of two centuries, but directly of one, — that of 
giving the whole initiative and the subsequent guidance 
and control of legislation to the executive, subject to its 
responsibility to the legislature, and, through that body, 
to the final arbitration of the people at large. To estab- 
lish this proposition may be said to be the sole reason of 
existence of this work. 

The third argument advanced by Mr. Ford, that the 
President has come more into direct contact with the peo- 
ple, has also lost its force. While it is becoming more and 
more evident that the people, if it comes to a direct strug- 
gle with Congress, are prepared to support the President, 
they are still under the idea that Congress is and should 
be the directing power of the government, and that its 
will must prevail. This idea is studiously encouraged by 
the party politicians, and their whole efforts are devoted 
to the control of the nominating conventions, so that the 

1 A. J. W. in the Encyclopedia Americana, Supplemental Dictionary 
to the Encyclopedia Britannica, J. M. Stoddard, Philadelphia, 1889. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 369 

candidate selected may be held in rigid subjection to party 
-^meaning their own — demands. However any Presi- 
dent may resist Congress in matters of detail, as to which 
that body does not take any decided stand, experience 
shows that in any important policy or assertion of power, 
when Congress is resolute he must yield, unless he is pre- 
pared to make a direct appeal to the people, which no 
President has yet done. 

We will add here one or two of Professor Woodrow 
Wilson's conclusions, leaving those interested to examine 
his arguments. 

/ The President is no greater than his prerogative of veto makes him ; 
(he is, in other words, powerful rather as a branch of the legislature 
/than as the titular head of the executive. Almost all distinctly 
/executive functions are distinctively bestowed upon the heads of 
* departments. . . . 1 

But committees prefer to govern in the dark rather than not to 
govern at all, and the secretaries, as a matter of fact, find themselves 
bound, in all things larger than routine details, by laws which have 
been made for them, and which they have no legitimate means of 
modifying. . . . 2 
/ In so far as the President is an executive officer he is the servant 
I of Congress, and the members of the Cabinet, being confined to execu- 
tive functions, are altogether the servants of Congress. . . . 3 

Congress took command of the government as soon as it got com- 
mand of itself, and no secretary of to-day can claim, by virtue of his 
office, recognition as a party authority. Congress looks upon advice 
offered to it by any but its own members as gratuitous impertinence. 4 

The real position of the President appears most clearly 
when there is a majority against him in both houses. It 
might be supposed that the minority party would bend 
their efforts to the support and strengthening of their of- 
ficial leader. So far from that, they are intent only on the 
promotion of their own schemes; and the means of influ- 
ence at the command of the President are just as available, 

1 "Congressional Government" — The Executive, p. 260. 

2 Ibid. j p. 262. « Ibid., p. 266. 4 Ibid., p. 270. 

2 b 



370 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

subject, of course, to the effect upon the opinion of the 
country, with the actual majority as with his own nominal 
adherents. Both sides are congressmen and senators 
before being partisans, and are quite ready to join forces 
in squeezing the President as far as they dare. 

One consequence of thus depriving the executive of all 
legitimate power was that there was no need of great men 
to fill the place. In fact, to put great men in it would be 
a waste of power. Notwithstanding the dignified charac- 
ter of the position, therefore, the men who were put there 
soon came to be of a class who could be used for quite 
other than the ostensible purposes. This reasoning is 
curiously borne out by the facts. In the first generation 
the presidential office was held by Washington, Adams, 
Jefferson, and Madison. In the second generation it was 
eagerly sought for by men of quite equal mental calibre, 
— Webster, Clay, and Calhoun, — but they all failed of 
obtaining it, and died disappointed. Jackson was the last 
President before the war who could claim any considerable 
intellectual power. Men like Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, 
Polk, Pierce, Fillmore, and Buchanan, were the mere tools 
of party wire-pullers. 

The rebound from this state of things was certainly 
very great ; but Abraham Lincoln rose on a great wave 
of national excitement, wholly outside of Congress. That 
he was able to make his greatness felt in the presidential 
chair was owing to the fact that Congress, which had 
blundered along fairly well in time of peace and while 
the conflict of interests in the early development of the 
country was still moderate, felt its own impotence when 
confronted by the problem of civil war, practically abdi- 
cated its functions, did obediently whatever the executive 
required, and handed over the government, with the tacit 
consent of the country, to four years of military despot- 
ism. It was a manifestation of the same principle under 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 371 

which the remains of the Long Parliament gave way to 
Cromwell, and those of the French Convention to Napo- 
leon, only that the elasticity and mobility of popular 
government allowed the process, for that time at least, to 
take place rapidly and peacefully, and with a power of 
recovery after the great struggle had passed. 

And the recurrence was comprehensive. Grant lost, in 
his civil functions as President, most of the reputation 
which he had gained as a general; while Hayes, Garfield, 
and Arthur did not possess, or did not show, qualities 
above mediocrity. In one respect, however, there has 
been a distinct gain. While no President of the United 
States has ever disgraced his position by gross public mis- 
conduct, yet before the war there were Presidents who, 
under the influence of the slave power, committed acts 
which exposed them to the charge of unfaithfulness in 
their high office. Since that time no President has quitted 
the chair without carrying with him the respect of his 
countrymen and the world for his personal character and 
intentions. The fact is, that the nominating politicians, 
in all their scheming and intrigue, dare not present to the 
people of the United States any name which does not 
offer the guarantee of high personal character. In one 
attempt to do so they received a sharp and wholesome 
lesson. 

It is intended that this work shall be kept free from 
party politics, but it cannot be denied that when James G. 
Blaine was nominated in 1884, there was a feeling, more or 
less widespread, that besides being a politician skilled in 
all the ways of his profession, he had used the high office 
of Speaker for purposes of personal gain. Whether it 
was true or not, the charge was sufficient to break the 
line of Republican succession, and to give to the country 
the first Democratic President since the war. If Mr. 
Cleveland acquired any reputation beyond that for per- 



871 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

sonal honesty and firmness of character, it was from hold- 
ing and asserting his opinions in opposition to Congress, 
and thereby sounding the first notes of the conflict which 
is impending in the future between the executive and the 
legislature. 

The methods of selecting Presidents are quite in accord 
with all the rest. In the first elections, Washington, 
Adams, and Jefferson were the obvious candidates and 
accepted by general consent. From 1789 to 1800 there 
were no formal nominations. From 1800 to 1824 nomi- 
nations were made by congressional caucuses, a perfectly 
natural and logical step in the process by which the legis- 
lature aims to get complete control of the executive. But 
the state legislatures and the local politicians, as well as 
the people at large, wished to have a hand in the matter, 
and so from 182-4 to 1840 nominations were irregularly 
made by the legislatures and popular meetings. By 1840 
this procedure had crystallized into the system of great 
nominating conventions, which has prevailed ever since. 

Mr. Bryce has given an account of the formation and 
procedure of these conventions. It is certainly not ex- 
aggerated and offers by no means an attractive picture. 
There are, however, two things to be said about them. 
Their action is forced by circumstances to be built up 
from below and cannot be guided from above. In other 
words, no candidate is ever selected for what he has 
done or can do, but because he is available for party pur- 
poses. The principal feature of the whole government at 
Washington is the suppression of personality. We have 
seen how completely the President is deprived of all con- 
i ml or guidance of legislation, while even in administration 
he is little more than the mechanical agent of Congress. 
It is a perfectly colorless position. We shall see also how 
all individuality disappears in Congress, and how neither 
representatives nor senators can present themselves before 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 373 

the country as having done service which entitles them to 
such promotion as is implied in a nomination for the presi- 
dency. All the minor considerations, therefore, which 
Mr. Bryce enumerates with such wonder have their place 
simply because the nominations must depend upon some 
considerations and there are no others. 

Thus, in 1884, when Mr. Cleveland had been a mayor 
of Buffalo and a governor of New York, as good as the 
conditions would permit, his election nearly miscarried 
because of some not very unusual circumstances in his 
private life as a bachelor. No doubt it was a blot upon his 
character, but to those who know anything of government 
and history it must seem ludicrously disproportioned to 
the requirements of the case. What the governing condi- 
tions might be made appears from the second of the points 
above referred to, namely, that through all the turmoil 
and confusion of such scenes as Mr. Bryce describes, when 
it seems as if the nomination might depend upon chance, 
passion, or intrigue, and when corruption might have full 
sway, the fact remains that the politicians on both sides, 
who have most to do with managing the conventions, are 
well aware that to have any chance of success in the elec- 
tion they must select men of high personal character, and 
such as can meet the deliberate approval of the people of 
the United States. 1 The nomination, indeed, might be 
the result of momentary impulse, but the four months of 
discussion which follow, ended by a formal appeal to the 
ballot, form a test severe enough, thus far at least, to hold 
in check the forces of evil. Universal suffrage has done 
all it could in enforcing the nomination of good men. If 
it has not been able to secure great men, it is not because 

1 Even the nomination and the platform of the Democratic party at 
Chicago in 1896 were mainly the result of absence of leadership and of 
popular exasperation with the rule of party and private interests at Wash- 
ington. The fault was much less with the people than with the govern- 
ment. Anarchy at the top is sure to be followed by anarchy at the bottom. 



374 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

it does not want them but because the conditions of our 
public life leave no room for them, because the careful 
suppression of individuality at every stage gives the public 
no information by which it can distinguish great men from 
small ones, and because there is no training-ground for 
public men. However great a man the President of the 
United States might be, he has no opportunity to show 
the qualities of greatness. The nominations are therefore 
made with reference to other than such useless qualities 
as these. 

Mr. Bryce divides the issues in a presidential campaign 
into personal and party. We have seen why the personal 
issue relates more to the private life and character than 
to the public policy and achievements of the candidate. 
There is the same want of definiteness in the party issues. 
The platforms of the parties and the letters of acceptance 
of the candidates deal almost wholly with abstract gener- 
alities. Such a cry as " the bill and nothing but the bill " 
would be impossible in the United States because there 
never is a bill. The McKinley Tariff Bill, for example, 
as a campaign issue, was not a bill to be carried by popular 
pressure, but a bill passed and actually in operation, and 
of which only the general principle was in question. Of 
its details the people knew little more than of the French 
tariff, because it had never been publicly debated in Con- 
gress and no man of national reputation was identified 
with it. McKinley was a representative from a district 
in Ohio whose name was accidentally connected with the 
bill from his chairmanship of a committee. The country 
had never heard of him before, and when, in 1896, he was 
nominated for the presidency, it was upon a wholly differ- 
ent issue, that of sound money, to which he bore no more 
personal relation than any other citizen. A tariff cam- 
paign is conducted upon the abstract and indefinite mean- 
ing of the word ' protection ' ; a word which of itself has a 



. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OE THE UNITED STATES 375 

very captivating sound. Politics instead of being guided 
from above are built up from below. Instead of asking 
the people to support known leaders who undertake to 
carry special measures, the country is appealed to upon 
general principles, and men are put forward as typical of 
those principles in an equally general way. 

Mr. Bryce speaks of slavery, which during a generation 
was the chief political topic, as peculiarly fitted for emo- 
tional treatment. That emotional treatment, instead of 
leading to a statesmanlike plan of compromise, led straight 
to civil war. But the other topics which Mr. Bryce speaks 
of as needing now to be debated, such as the regulation 
of the tariff and the currency, competing plans of liquor 
legislation, labor questions, etc., are treated precisely in 
the same emotional way, though they are obviously impos- 
sible of solution in any such way. The President, so far 
as his election relates to public affairs at all, is merely a 
type of a general idea. Is it strange that great men do 
not find their way to the place ? 

Mr. Bryce regards a presidential campaign with the 
same mixture of wonder and amusement as all other Euro- 
peans. The amount of " organization," the number of clubs 
of all kinds, the immense campaign literature, the flood of 
oratory, the brass bands, the torchlight processions, the 
large sums subscribed for party purposes, the frantic ex- 
hortations of the newspapers and the milder ones of the 
clergy, the interruption of business, — all are described 
in a tone of gentle humor. 

A European who stands amazed at the magnitude of these demon- 
strations is apt to ask whether the result attained is at all commensu- 
rate with the money, time, and effort given to them. 1 

Yet his profound observation, his keen, clear, and im- 
partial judgment cannot escape from the sound conclusion 
of his summing up. 

i Vol. II,, p. 175. 



376 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chip. 

Although, however, the political contest does less for the formation 
of political thought and the diffusion of political knowledge than 
might have been hoped from the immense efforts put forth and the 
intelligence of the voters addressed, it rouses and stirs the public life 
of the country. One can hardly imagine what the atmosphere of 
American politics would be without this quadrennial storm sweeping 
through it to clear away stagnant vapors and recall to every citizen 
the sense of his own responsibility for the present welfare and future 
greatness of his country. 1 

The fact is that a presidential election in America is 
not merely, as Mr. Bryce says, something to which Europe 
can show nothing similar. It is something the like of 
which has never yet been seen in the world. We have 
seen how in French history the whole trouble arose from 
the distrust, the mutual ignorance, the discord, jealousy, 
and dissension between classes, which were so studiously 
sown by the monarchs for three centuries from 1461. We 
have seen, further, how in England united effort in resist- 
ing the Crown and retaining control of taxation held at 
least the higher and middle classes together in common 
sympathy and action, of which the effects are felt to this 
day. 

Once in four years the whole American people are called 
to turn aside from their money-getting and their personal 
self-seeking, to join in a struggle which is of common in- 
terest to all, but directly personal to very few. From 
Maine to California, from Oregon to Florida, from Wis- 
consin to Louisiana, one topic absorbs every household, 
every club, every individual, equally among the rich and 
the poor. A citizen of any of these places, sojourning in 
any other, can go out from his hotel and find the first man 
in the street deeply interested in the same subject which 
absorbs himself, and community of party forms an instant 
bond between them. 

The London Spectator, in its issue of October 12, 1895, 

1 p. 185. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 377 

said, " In truth the Anglo-Saxon race has never produced 
a nobler and greater man than Lincoln." Almost every 
American will cordially agree with this, but only a few 
years before the war Mr. Lincoln was as little known to 
the world as any particular grain of sand on the seashore. 
The people of the North were strongly excited upon a 
particular question, and the managing politicians sought 
for a man who would meet the requirements of the situa- 
tion. They will always do that, if only it is made clear 
what the people want. But in the absence of definite 
issues and of decided personalities they have no guide. 
They can form no idea of what public opinion is. They 
can only guess in what way it can be created or stimu- 
lated, and are tempted to try to mould it to their own 
selfish ideas and schemes. That Mr. Lincoln was able 
to show great qualities and to justify his selection was 
owing to the fact that the practice of our government 
was temporarily surrendered, that Congress did obediently 
whatever the executive wanted, and that for once we had 
a strong executive. 1 But as soon as the war was over, as 
Congress resumed its sway and the executive subsided into 
its former insignificance, the presidential election again 
became without meaning in its relation to public affairs. 2 

1 It may be urged that this argument is just as good the other way. 
The people being purposely deceived by party politicians, or misled by 
imperfect information, may put an unknown man into power, with the 
capacity for achieving as much for evil as President Lincoln did for good. 
That is unquestionably true, and forms the greatest danger which 
threatens the Republic in the future. The safeguard is to be found in 
taking security that unknown men shall not be placed before the people 
at all ; in providing that Congress and public life shall form from the out- 
set a training school and a testing apparatus for the evolution of states- 
men ; that every public man shall wear upon his sleeve the evidence of 
wisdom in counsel and achievement in action ; and that in place of prac- 
tically unknown candidates forced upon the people by party politicians, 
public opinion shall indicate peremptorily to the nominating conventions 
the only candidates whom they can put forward with any hope of success. 

2 The mode of doing this was strikingly illustrative of the ambition of 



378 



THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, 



The other effect, however, still remained. Once a year 
the French and German armies assemble to the number 
of many thousands, at vast expense and for no immediate 
purpose, to keep themselves in first-class condition for 
their trade of killing. The elections are our autumn 
manoeuvres. They keep the people in training for the 
time of need. And if they were to go on for a century 
apparently an empty and costly ceremony, yet if in one 
crisis like our Civil War they do their office in producing 
an Abraham Lincoln, they will have paid for themselves 
a hundred times over. 1 

Thousands of Europeans have doubtless read with 
amused wonder Mr. Bryce's account of twenty-five thou- 
sand New York business men, representing vast wealth, 
tramping up Broadway in procession in 1884, in mud and 
rain but with undamped enthusiasm, singing the most 
unmeaning campaign songs. The array may not have 
been as imposing, but the motive was certainly as respect- 
able as that of the kings and emperors who with their 
military hierarchy marshal their conscripts, ready at a 
nod of the august head to plunge into bloodshed and 
slaughter. The account of that procession went all over 
the United States. In the cities and the towns and the 
villages, in the workshop of the factory hand and the 

a legislature. When Andrew Johnson, succeeding Mr. Lincoln, was mis- 
led by his example into supposing that the President really possessed some 
independence, Congress met his attempt at self-assertion by prompt im- 
peachment. No doubt the impeachment came to nothing because there 
was no personal hostility to Mr. Johnson. All that the politicians wanted 
was to teach the incumbent of the office that, the war being over, the 
President must return to his position of absolute subjection to Congress. 
That lesson being enforced, they cared very little what became of the 
individual. 

1 If it is asked, How does this apply to the case of President McKinley? 
we reply that the difference between Abraham Lincoln and William 
McKinley forms the strongest and most concentrated illustration of the 
Change which in a generation has come over our government through the 
operation of the forces described in this book as working upon it. 



xvi THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 379 

cabin of the farm laborer, it was read with pulse beating 
quicker from the same sentiment of pride which animated 
each man in the procession. "I too am an American 
citizen," an ideal for which, as the war showed, he is 
ready to give his property and his life. 

The object to be arrived at is a fund of common enthu- 
siasm in all ranks and classes, so that every citizen, in- 
stead of holding back from jealousy of those above and 
below him, or from apathy through consciousness of the 
minuteness of his individual effort, may give way to his 
own feelings with full confidence that millions of others 
will do the same. It is the spirit which makes the pri- 
vate in a well-disciplined and well-officered regiment stand 
firm in battle, because he has an undoubting faith in the 
steadiness of his next neighbor. Perhaps nothing during 
the war excited greater surprise than the unflagging de- 
termination of the mass of the people to prosecute it to 
the end. It was no special peculiarity of the American 
people, perhaps not the least heterogeneous in the world. 
It was that they had been trained to such work. 

There is still another effect. The elections teach the 
twelve millions of voters that, however high excitement 
may seem during the conflict, yet when once the result 
is declared all must submit, laugh, and go back to their 
occupations, looking for redress if at all to a change of 
public opinion. Seldom has there been a greater trial 
of endurance than the Hayes-Tilden election, when all 
doubtful questions were settled by a strict party vote of 
eight to seven in a commission appointed for the purpose. 
Yet the result was accepted almost without a murmur. 
The effect of this habit even extended to the war. In 
January, 1865, large armies were in the field, supported 
by the government and seeking to destroy each other by 
every species of violence. Six months later, when peace 
had been declared, those armies had laid down their arms 



3au THE LESSON OP POPULAR GOVERNMENT chaf. 

and were making the best of their way back to the occu- 
pations of peace with hardly a feeling of resentment, cer- 
tainly with no thought of revenge. A people does not 
do such a thing as that from a single impulse or of its 
own motion. It does so because it has been trained to it 
by a long course of preparation. 

These reasons go to show further that the presidential 
term is not too short. It is frequently argued that this 
term should be extended at least to six years, that the 
burden is too heavy, and that no sooner is one president 
elected than the politicians begin to plan for the next. 
But if the people are to be kept in training the interval 
should not be too great. We shall see what powerful 
forces are working in the other direction to disintegrate 
public opinion and to throw the people back into mutual 
distrust, indifference, and neglect of public duty. With 
a new generation of voters coming every year into the 
field, the tonic of a presidential election cannot be said to 
come too often. 

In a former chapter 1 we have quoted from De Tocque- 
ville the reasons why the Assembly of 1848, in settling 
what he calls the most crucial question of the executive 
power, decided that it should be given to a single man 
elected by the nation. The disastrous result does not 
prove that the conclusion was wrong, but only that 
France was in no condition to provide for an elected 
ruler of any kind. The most beneficent effect of the 
twenty-five years of the Third Republic would be if it 
prepared the country for the transfer of the election of 
the President from the Assembly to the people, without 
involving thereby the election of a military despot. 

Dc Tocqueville also gives the reasons for adopting the 
rule which is sometimes advocated in this country that 
a president should be ineligible for reelection. Later 

i Chap. XI. 



Xvi THE PRESIDENT OE THE UNITED STATES 381 

experience convinced him that this conclusion was wholly 
wrong, and he sums up the numerous and cogent argu- 
ments against it by saying that, 

from the moment when it had been decided that it would be the 
citizens themselves who would directly choose the President, the evil 
such as it was was irremediable, and that it would be only increasing 
it to undertake rashly to restrict the people in their choice. 

It has been observed that while the presidential elec- 
tions as a whole are tending to raise the character of the 
people, other influences are tending even more positively 
to drag it down. These may be summed up from a politi- 
cal point of view in the anarchy resulting from the sup- 
pression of executive power and the absorption of all 
government by the legislature, a force which is certain 
in the long run, unless some stand is made against it, to 
assert its superiority over all others, at least during a 
period of transition. We have now to turn our eyes in 
that direction. 



CHAPTER XVII 

GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 

IT is one of the great merits of the Federal Constitution 
that it furnishes only a framework of government 
without going too much into details, and has therefore 
been sufficiently tough and elastic to adapt itself without 
much formal modification to the vast social and political 
changes of the last century. Even the British Constitu- 
tion, which is supposed to be wholly without fixed limits, 
has perhaps hardly undergone greater changes in its spirit 
and modes of operation than has that of the United States 
in its departure from the ideas and intentions of its fram- 
ers. But this want of extending into details has also its 
disadvantages. The Constitution provided for a legisla- 
ture, an executive, and a judiciary, but it did not, probably 
it could not, fix any line of division or provide for the 
maintenance of such a line. Many political maxims which 
have since grown almost to be axioms were then hardly 
visible even to the most prophetic eye. Then it had not 
been demonstrated that the problem of popular govern- 
ment was to turn mainly upon a struggle for power be- 
tween the executive and the legislature, in which the 
legislature would have an enormous advantage. 

Yet the consciousness of impending danger made itself 
apparent in many quarters. The history of colonial gov- 
ernment was that of steady absorption of power by the 
legislature. 

u The legislature," says Bancroft, " was the centre of the system. 
The governor had no power to dissolve it or either branch. In most 

882 



chap, xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 383 

of the States all important civil and military officers were elected by 
the legislature. The scanty power intrusted to the governor was still 
further restrained, wherever his power was more than a shadow, by 
an executive council. Where the governor had the nomination of 
officers they could be commissioned only by consent of the Council." 
He might have added that the governor himself was generally elected 
by the legislature ; that in many states the legislature could remove 
any officer ; that in some states these bodies held or shared the par- 
doning power ; and, most singular of all, in five states they exercised 
extensive judicial powers, generally sitting as a court of last resort. 1 

In the Convention of 1787 Madison said : — 

Experience proves a tendency in our governments to throw all 
power into the legislative vortex. The executives of the States are 
little more than ciphers ; the legislatures are omnipotent. If no effec- 

1 This extract and those following have been taken from a pamphlet 
on American Constitutions by Horace Davis of San Francisco, in the 
"Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science," 
third series, 1885. Mr. Davis thinks that the power of the State legisla- 
tures has been restricted and that of the executive increased till the 
proper balance has been restored, and that the danger in the federal 
government was never as great. It is needless to state that the view of 
the present writer is wholly different ; according to which all the remedies 
thus far adopted have been wholly inadequate to the disease and the origi- 
nal evil remains to be combated in its full strength, having, moreover, 
with the increase of population and in the complexity of our civilization, 
assumed an aspect portentous beyond our previous experience. 

Mr. Davis himself sounds one note of alarm : — 

" Government by parties, which has become the form of our political 
life, has, however, brought one dangerous feature of legislative encroach- 
ment, the right claimed by Congress to determine the validity of the 
electoral vote of any State in the presidential election. We have had one 
narrow escape from civil war through this source. Such a contingency 
may never arise again, but so great a peril must be guarded against. If 
Congress can by this means make a President, the system so carefully de- 
vised to maintain the independence of the executive is broken down, and 
we are drifting upon the shoals so much feared by the fathers of the Con- 
stitution. The same spirit which is always ready to unseat a member in 
a nearly balanced House of Representatives for the purpose of increasing 
the working majority of the party would not scruple in a closely contested 
presidential election to grasp at any technicality to win the grander prize, 
the control of the federal government. These fears may never be real- 
ized, but they threaten the most serious invasion of the independence of 
the executive ever yet attempted." 



384 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tual check be devised on the encroachments of the latter a revolution 
will be inevitable. 

And speaking of the federal government : — 

Wilson of Pennsylvania was most apprehensive that the legislature 
by swallowing up all the other powers would lead to a dissolution of 
the government, no adequate self-defensive power having been granted 
either to the executive or the judicial departments. He foreshadowed 
the power of the Senate in these prophetic words : " The President 
will not be the man of the people, but the minion of the Senate. He 
cannot even appoint a tide-waiter without it." 

Again in the Federalist Madison says with reference to 
the State constitutions : — 

" The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of 
its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex. The 
founders of our republics seem never to have recollected the danger 
from legislative usurpations, which by assembling all power in the 
same hands must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by execu- 
tive usurpations." . . . And he quotes from Jefferson's "Notes on 
Virginia " the following passage relative to the same defects in the 
Virginia constitution : "All the powers of the government — legisla- 
tive, executive, and judiciary — result to the same legislative body. 
The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the defini- 
tion of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these 
powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands and not by a single 
one." 

With reference to the President's veto Judge Story 
remarks : — 

There is a natural tendency in the legislative department to in- 
trude upon the rights and absorb the powers of the other departments 
of government. A mere parchment delineation of the boundaries of 
each is wholly insufficient for the protection of the weaker branch, as 
the executive unquestionably is, and hence there arises a constitu- 
tional necessity of arming it with powers for its own defence. If the 
executive did not possess this qualified negative he would be gradu- 
ally stripped of all his authority and become what it is well known 
the governors of some States are, a mere pageant and shadow of 
magistracy. 

We have endeavored to show that the veto has failed 
and must completely fail to accomplish the purpose here 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 385 

set forth. One extract from a foreign observer may be 
added to those now given. 

Smythe, in his " Lectures on Modern History," written in 1811 
from an English standpoint, says, "If there results to America a 
grand calamity and failure of the whole, it can only accrue from the 
friends of liberty not venturing to render the executive power suffi- 
ciently effective, — the common mistake of all popular governments." 

In considering how far these forebodings have been 
justified by the facts, we have to examine the structure 
and modes of operation of Congress, not taking into ac- 
count by what historical process it came to be what it is, 
nor yet what under the Constitution it was intended to 
be, but through an analysis of the working machinery as 
it actually is. On the first Monday of December in alter- 
nate years, there come together in the House of Repre- 
sentatives 356 members — or as many as arrive — from an 
equal number of fractional parts of the United States. 
They are all precisely equal. There is no one of them 
who, by virtue of office, or of a larger constituency, or for 
any reason, can claim any precedence over the others. 
The nearest approach to it consists in this, that whereas 
from one-third to one-half the members come there for 
the first time, — for which good reasons will presently be 
shown, — some members may have been in one or more 
previous Congresses, may have been chairmen of important 
committees, or may even have filled the office of Speaker. 
But after all they only represent single districts like every 
other member, they have a plenty of rivals among them- 
selves, and there is no reason why they should, as they 
almost certainly will not, receive any deference from the 
others. 

So impotent is this body, for want of initiation or co- 
hesion, that it can do nothing at all till it has been called 
to order by the clerk of the last House and has proceeded 
to elect a Speaker. Even then it is wholly without lead- 
2c 



386 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

era or any authoritative guidance, official or other, which 
can compel or enable it to go to work. That any work 
may be done or any business transacted it is of course 
necessary to make a majority, whether for the settlement 
of single questions in detail or for providing a working 
force during the session. There are two methods possible 
for this, — one the cement of party and the other the 
authority of recognized leaders. The well-known party 
names of Republican and Democrat are exceedingly in- 
definite and not marked by any distinct principles. Their 
reason of existence from year to year consists in the " plat- 
forms" put forward by the party conventions. These 
platforms consist of a series of resolutions drawn up by 
a committee wholly impersonal and irresponsible and of 
which very few persons know either the names or the 
origin. The resolutions are of the most general character 
and intended to command as much assent and as little dis- 
sent as possible. As a means of enforcing party discipline 
they are evidently of the flimsiest kind. 

As regards leaders there can be none among a body of 
356 equals, of whom every one is jealous of his position. 
If, indeed, any one of them held an office of marked im- 
portance he might command more or less of obedience, 
but there is none such unless it is the Speaker, of whom 
more presently. If there was any one present who owed 
his election to the whole nation the members from districts 
might be inclined to show him some deference, but there 
is none. The only way of getting a majority, therefore, 
is by a laborious process of accumulation of units. It 
must be built up one by one till it reaches at least the 
number of 179, and an unceasing vigilance is required to 
resist the tendency to disintegration, which is almost as 
great as with a house of cards or of sand. 

Prom this state of things there has arisen by a perfectly 
aatural evolution the two processes which are made the 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 387 

heaviest ground of complaint not only against Congress 
but the State legislatures, namely, " log-rolling " and 
" lobbying." The first of these words signifies the trad- 
ing of interests. Every member must want something 
either for himself or his constituents or his party or the 
public welfare, and he wants that thing not so much from 
a common understanding with a number of others as from 
his own particular point of view. Now to find out what 
these separate objects of members are and to secure 
mutual support by promising mutual aid is the work of 
" log-rolling," and this among such a number of varying 
interests and characters requires a high degree of skill. 
The men who to a natural aptitude for the work have 
added training and experience are known as " lobbyists," 
and they may be in or outside of Congress, and either 
male or female. 

An interesting comparison suggested by Mr. Bryce here 
presents itself : — 

I have mentioned the Whips. Let me say a word on this vital, yet 
even in England little appreciated, part of the machinery of constitu- 
tional government. Each party in the House of Commons has, be- 
sides its leaders, a member of the House nominated by the chief leader 
as his aide-de-camp and called the whipper in, or, for shortness, the 
whip. The whip's duties are : 1. To inform every member belong- 
ing to the party when an important division may be expected, and if 
he sees the member in or about the House to keep him there until the 
division is called. 2. To direct the members of his own party how to 
vote. 3. To obtain pairs for them if they cannot be present to vote. 
4. To tell, i.e. count, the members in every party division. 5. To 
*' keep touch " of opinion within the party and convey to the leader a 
faithful impression of that opinion, from which the latter can judge 
how far he may count on the support of his whole party in any course 
he proposes to take. A member in doubt how he shall vote on a 
question with regard to which he has no opinion of his own, goes to 
the whip for counsel. A member who without grave cause stays away 
unpaired from an important division to which the whip has duly sum- 
moned him, is guilty of a misdemeanor only less flagrant than that of 
voting against his party. A ministerial whip is further bound to keep 
a house, i.e. to secure that when government business is being consid- 



388 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

ered there shall always be a quorum of members present, and of 
course also to keep a majority, i.e. to have within reach a number 
of supporters sufficient to give the ministry a majority on any minis- 
terial division. Without the constant presence and activity of the 
ministerial whip the wheels of government could not go on for a day, 
because the ministry would be exposed to the risk of casual defeats 
which would destroy their credit and might involve their resignation. 1 

Mr. Bryce finds in the caucus the nearest substitute 
for the English whips, but he looks upon it as a cumbrous 
expedient. 

It is used whenever a line of policy has to be settled or the whole 
party to be rallied for a particular party division. But of course it 
cannot be employed every day or for every bill. Hence where no 
party meeting has issued its orders a member is free to vote as he 
pleases, or, rather, as he thinks his constituents please. 2 

But the defect is much greater than this. The caucus 
is a party section of the legislature. In the one case, as 
in the other, every member is equal and independent, 
inclined to resent and resist any assumed superiority. 
Mutual concession and intrigue in both cases are the 
necessary resort. The real counterpart of the English 
whip is the lobbyist, with, however, a marked difference. 
From the description above given of the duties of the 
whip, it appears that he is the medium of communication 
between the ministry and the party in the House. His 
work, though he is clothed with authority, is mainly 
formal, and he does not think of urging, of his own 
motion, any policy or particular legislation. The lobby- 
ist, on the other hand, is the agent of nobody knows 
whom. He is clothed with no authority at all and must 
expect coolness and rebuff on every hand. His aim must 
be to enforce a particular policy and particular legisla- 
tion, not as proceeding from any recognized leaders but 
as cither desirable in itself or in accordance with the sup- 
posed principles of the party, though it is very likely that 
1 Op. cit.. Chap. XIX., Vol. I., p. 109. * Ibid., p. 201. 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 389 

neither of these reasons represents his real motive of action. 
The work as carried on is neither agreeable nor respect- 
able. While, therefore, the whip may be and probably 
is an honorable man, the successful lobbyist must almost 
of necessity be unscrupulous both as to means and ends. 

And the misfortune of the case is that as lobbying is 
really the only method of obtaining a majority, legislation 
which is promotive of the public welfare and in forward- 
ing which men are moved by public spirit or honorable 
ambition is thrust into the background, and the field is 
occupied by greedy and pushing schemers whose deeds 
are peculiarly suited to the darkness in which they must 
of necessity work. 

These effects of the want of cohesion among the units 
of which the House is made up are greatly aggravated by 
the fact that every one of these units represents a separate 
and small fraction of the United States. There is no one 
of them who in any way represents or is entitled to speak 
for the whole. Any member, therefore, or any number 
of members, who undertake the task of defending the 
national as against private or local interests, are regarded 
as impertinent. 'What does this man,' it may be said, 
4 from a district in Maine, Wisconsin, or Louisiana, mean 
by interfering with us who come from Michigan, Pennsyl- 
vania, or Georgia? Who gave him authority to decide 
whether what our constituents want is or is not in accord- 
ance with the national interest ? ' And such an appeal is 
sure to meet with a prompt response from the other three 
hundred and odd members whose constituents, or some 
among them, have objects which they too want to accom- 
plish. We have in this a sufficient reason why private 
and local interests have a constant preponderance over 
that of the public at large. 

Once more, no member of the House has charge of or 
is concerned in or directly responsible for any branch of 



390 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

administration. Those who do have such charge and 
responsibility are wholly excluded from any share in 
guiding legislation. Is it surprising, therefore, that 
legislation is framed almost wholly with an eye to party 
and personal interests, rather than to its effect upon the 
government of the country ? 

With such characteristics as a whole we have next to 
see how this unwieldy body enters upon its business. 
As Mr. Bryce says : — 

Without some sort of organization an assembly of 356 men would 
be a mob, so necessity has provided in the system of committees a 
substitute for the European party organization. 1 

It would perhaps have been more correct to say for 
cabinet government. But Mr. Bryce evades a direct 
comparison between government by a cabinet and a sys- 
tem of standing committees, though that comparison is 
the very essence of the whole matter. We will let Mr. 
Bryce tell the story, as there is really no American writer 
who can be quoted. 2 

When Congress first met in 1789 both houses found themselves, as 
the State legislatures had theretofore been and still are, without official 
members and without leaders. The Senate occupied itself chiefly 
with executive business, and appointed no standing committees until 
1816. The House, however, had bills to discuss, plans of taxation 
to frame, difficult questions of expenditure and particularly of the 
national debt to consider. For want of persons whose official duty 
required them, like English ministers, to run the machine by drafting 
schemes and bringing the raw material of its work into shape, it was 
forced to appoint committees. At first these were few; even in 1802 
we find only five. As the numbers of the House increased and more 

1 Op. eft., Part I., Chap. XIV., p. 148. 

2 Exception should be made in favor of the very valuable work of 
Professor Woodrow Wilson on "Congressional Government." So far as 
my knowledge goes he is the first native author who has set forth the fact 
and the explanation that the failures of our government are owing to Con- 
gress and its methods. It is significant of the complete national ignorance 
of the subject, that that work has not received the measure of public 
recognition which it deserves. 



xtii GOVEKNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 391 

business flowed in additional committees were appointed, and as the 
House became more and more occupied by large political questions 
minor matters were more and more left to be settled by these secret 
bodies. Like all legislatures the House constantly sought to extend 
its vision and its grasp, and the easiest way to do this was to provide 
itself with new eyes and new hands in the shape of further com- 
mittees. 1 

There were in the Fifty-fourth Congress fifty-six of 
these standing committees. It should be observed that 
of the 356 members each one may, if he pleases, offer 356 
bills and upon any subject, whether vital questions of 
finance, either revenue or expenditure, or upon matters 
of legislation which concern only individuals. In fact, 
from ten thousand to twenty thousand bills and resolu- 
tions are so presented at every Congress. Every one of 
these bills is referred to a standing committee, and there 
is often a contest, to be decided in case of need by the 
House, as to which committee it shall go to. The Com- 
mittee on Appropriations and, in a less degree, the Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means, have certain advantages in 
forcing consideration of their reports, but otherwise the 
committees, like the members, are precisely equal and 
must depend upon skill of management for any chance 
of success with their schemes. The committees are not 
wholly made up from the party majority. There is always 
a minority of the opposite party, the effect of which is to 
diminish greatly party responsibility for any measure. 

In the British Parliament the first reading of a bill 
turns upon granting leave for its admission. The second 
reading involves the acceptance or rejection of the prin- 
ciple contained in it, and it then goes to a committee of 
the whole, which, after discussing it in detail, reports it 
back to the House for the final test of a third reading. 
In our Congress the first and second readings are granted 
at once as a matter of course and without debate, since 

1 Op. cit, Vol. L, Chap. XV., p. 151. 



THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

there would be no time to discuss the immense number of 
bills presented. 

It must be observed again that no business whatever 
has been prepared before Congress meets. Instead of 
having certain measures ready to be laid before the House 
for its consideration as soon as it comes together, that 
House has for weeks, perhaps for months, nothing what- 
ever to do. 1 The bills and resolutions offered have to be 
worked up by the committees, which, unless there is some 
emergency commanding the immediate assent both of the 
committees and the House, is a matter of no little time. 
The work of the committees is done practically in secret. 
No doubt public hearings are given, when anybody is sup- 
posed to have the privilege of being heard, and where the 
members of the Cabinet and other administrative officers 
are sometimes invited or admitted to speak and to be 
questioned. But these are forms. The real discussions 
and deliberations of the committee are with closed doors. 
Two facts are to be kept clearly in mind : that the mem- 
bers of the committees like all of the House represent 
their districts only and not the nation, and that they are 
not at all responsible for the effect of what they may do 
upon administration. 

Again, a principal object of all the committees must be 
as much as possible to avoid public debate. In the first 
place, even if their motives are of the purest, their reports 
are the result of more or less strenuous conflict among 
their members, ending generally in a compromise which is 
not fitted to bear the strong light of debate, a conclusion 
which is much more probable if there has been any mix- 
ture of such other motives as have been indicated above. 
Moreover, the multitude of the committees and of their 

1 As Mr. Bagehot observes in his '-English Constitution," " If you get 
the ablest body of men together and give them nothing to do they will 
quarrel abort thai Dothlng." 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 393 

reports, and the fact that these, as the work upon them is 
not begun till after Congress meets, must be delayed until 
late in the session and perhaps are further postponed with 
intention, — these things render anything like effective 
debate impossible. There are two apparent exceptions in 
the case of the Ways and Means and Appropriations com- 
mittees, and it is significant that the committee on expen- 
diture is given a much more decided right of way than 
that upon revenue. These two committees, and especially 
the former, are generally allowed to command the time of 
the House at their pleasure. 

Upon all fiscal questions Congress acts with considerable delibera- 
tion and care. Financial legislation usually, if not always, occupies 
by far the most prominent place in the business of each session. 
Though other questions are often disposed of at odd moments, in 
haste and without thought, questions of revenue and supply are 
always given full measure of debate. Appropriation bills have, how- 
ever, a much higher privilege than have bills affecting the revenue, 
and instances are not wanting in which the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Appropriations has managed to engross the time of the 
House in the disposal of matters prepared by his committee to 
the entire exclusion of any action whatever on important bills re- 
ported by the Committee of Ways and Means after the most careful 
and laborious deliberation. His prerogatives are never disputed in 
such a contest for consideration between a supply and a revenue bill, 
because these two subjects do not under our system necessarily go 
hand in hand. Ways and means bills may, and should be, acted upon, 
but supply bills must be. 1 

But even in these particulars debate loses its force 
because there is no striking personality in whom the 
country takes an interest ; because the chairman, who is 
sometimes called the leader of the House for the time 
being, speaks not for himself but for his committee ; and 
because nobody connected with the government of the 
country has any share in the discussion. 

1 Woodrow Wilson, "Congressional Government," p. 183. 



301 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

It should be remarked in this connection, moreover, that much as 
Congress talks about fiscal questions, whenever permitted to do so by 
the selfish Appropriations Committee, its talk is very little heeded 
by the big world outside its halls. The noteworthy fact to which I 
have already called attention, that even the most thorough debates in 
Congress fail to awaken any general or active interest in the minds 
of the people, has had its most striking illustrations in the course of 
our financial legislation, for though the discussions which have taken 
place in Congress upon financial questions have been so frequent, so 
protracted, and so thorough, engrossing so large a part of the time of 
the House on their every recurrence, they seem, in almost every in- 
stance, to have made scarcely any impression at all upon the public 
mind. 1 

We have considered in a former chapter 2 the analogous 
system of bureaux in the French Chamber and its corre- 
sponding effect in suppressing the executive and bring- 
ing anarchy into the government. But the system differs 
radically in the mode of appointment. In France the 
bureaux are selected by lot, and each sends an elected 
member to one or more of the commissions which examine 
any subject. It seems a much less efficient method — and 
it does not involve other and far-reaching consequences — 
than the American one of having all standing committees 
made up by appointment through the Speaker. 

The Speaker's privilege of appointing the standing committees is 
nearly as old as Congress itself. At first the House tried the plan of 
balloting for its more important committees, ordering, in April, 1789, 
that the Speaker should appoint only those committees which should 
consist of not more than three members; but less than a year's 
experience of this method of organizing seems to have furnished 
satisfactory proof of its impracticability, and in January, 1790, the 
present rule was adopted, that "all committees shall be appointed by 
the Speaker, unless otherwise specially directed by the House." 8 

To English-speaking peoples the word 'Speaker' sug- 
gests two great officials— the presiding officers of the Brit- 
ish House of Commons and of the House of Representatives 

1 Woodrow Wilson, op. cit., p. 184. * Chap. XV. 

8 Woodrow Wilson, op. cit., p. 104. 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 395 

at Washington. We have examined in another chapter 
the position of the Speaker of the House of Commons, an 
officer who from the moment he is elected is supposed to 
give up all thought of party, to identify himself with no 
policy or measure or ministry, but to give all his energies 
to enforcing the rules and preserving the traditions of 
the House. He is expected to use absolute impartiality, 
especially in the protection of the minority, which every 
incumbent for a century has done so successfully that he 
has held the office for several parliaments and through 
all changes of party, receiving when he has retired the 
cordial thanks and praise of both sides. Indeed, Mr. 
R. F. Palgrave, in the North American Review of Decem- 
ber, 1895, says : — 

The Speaker is not only the maintainer of the privileges of Par- 
liament, but the special guardian of the public purse. He rigidly 
enforces the rules which fasten the initiative of expenditure upon the 
shoulders of government and which impose delays upon the passage 
of a money bill. I have heard a Speaker, though the suggestion was 
made solely for the convenience of the House, firmly resist an appeal 
from the prime minister for a slight infraction of the rule which 
retards the progress of a money bill. 

But his position in presiding over debate covers only 
the smallest functions of the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives. Every deliberative body must have a 
presiding officer as a condition of getting any business 
done, and the first requisite of success is that he shall be 
wholly impartial and not take sides with any fraction of 
the assembly. There is no need to go to the British Par- 
liament for an example, as they may be found in abun- 
dance in the moderator of the New England town meeting. 
But the moment that presiding officer becomes perhaps 
the bitterest partisan in the whole body, whatever may 
be his other merits, he becomes totally unfitted for his 
proper function, and will not only lose the respect of the 



THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

body but will quickly efface the traditions which preserve 
its dignity and decorum. This result must inevitably 
follow sooner or later from the absolute power given to 
the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 
appointment of the committees. 

It must always, of course, have seemed eminently desirable to all 
thoughtful and experienced men that Mr. Speaker should be no more 
than the judicial guide and moderator of the proceedings of the 
House, keeping apart from the heated controversies of party warfare 
and exercising none but an impartial influence upon the course of 
legislation, and probably when he was first invested with the power 
of appointment it was thought possible that he could exercise that 
great prerogative without allowing his personal views upon questions 
of public policy to control, or even affect, his choice. But it must 
very soon have appeared that it was too much to expect of a man 
who had it within his power to direct affairs that he should subdue 
all purpose to do so, and should make all appointments with an eye 
to regarding every preference but his own; and when that did be- 
come evident the rule was undoubtedly retained only because none 
better could be devised. 1 

Follow for one moment the links of the chain. The 
Speaker is elected by a party majority, being himself one 
equal member of that majority. When elected, he has 
the sole and absolute power of making up the standing 
committees, although all important nominations to execu- 
tive office by the President must be confirmed by the 
Senate. The places on these committees are objects of 
desire, and on the more important ones of keen and eager 
competition, though it is difficult to see why, as they con- 
fer neither power nor reputation, even upon the chairman, 
unless temporary and in a very slight degree, while the 
prospect of advancement attached to them is so small as 
not to be worth considering. On the other hand, they 
offer very great opportunities for illegitimate gain. From 
these considerations it follows that the only men of real 
ability who will seek them will tend to combine with that 

1 Woodrow Wilson, op. cit., p. 106. 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 397 

ability an absence of scruple. Such as the places are the 
Speaker is compelled to distribute them among his party 
supporters, mainly in proportion to their influence. But 
he cannot be a cipher in their hands. None but a strong 
man can rule a House of 356 men, who, if not turbulent 
like the French Chamber, are disorderly and undisciplined. 

The committees thus made up have almost full control 
of legislation, and work in secret with, as has been shown, 
an almost overwhelming temptation to use it for party 
rather than public purposes. When they make their 
reports, the Speaker, for the same reasons which guided 
him in making up the committees, is bound to use every 
means in his power to force through the schemes of his 
party friends ; a power which is enormously increased by 
the absence of anybody representing the whole country or 
the administration of the government. Of course, from the 
nature of his office he is compelled to make a show of 
impartiality, which, however, only increases the tone of 
falsity and pretence which characterizes the whole proced- 
ure of the House from the start. As a means of aiding 
the Speaker in his real purpose there has grown up a 
complex set of rules which have the effect of a glove of 
silk to conceal the hand of iron. 1 

Of course, the minority, smarting under such oppression, 
resort to all the parliamentary tricks known under the 
general name of " filibustering," to stave off their impend- 
ing fate. And this, in the hands of men who by genera- 
tions of practice have become most finished experts in the 
work, has been sufficient to reduce Congress practically 
to a condition of impotence. This state of things reached 
a crisis in the Fifty-first Congress which made the repu- 
tation of the then Speaker, Hon. Thomas B. Reed of 
Maine. The two remaining weapons upon which the 

1 For the effect of these rules, see Wilson, "Congressional Govern- 
ment," pp. 61 et seq. 



398 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

minority relied under the increasing weight of the rules 
were dilatory motions and the absence of a quorum. 
Under the old rules of the House, a quorum consisted of 
a majority of those present and voting. The sergeant-at- 
arms might compel the attendance of members but he 
could not compel them to vote. Mr. Reed announced 
his intention to include in the count of a quorum all the 
members whom he could see present, whether they voted 
or not. He further refused to entertain any motions 
which were evidently dilatory, taking upon himself, of 
course, to decide what motions were of that kind. After 
that matters went more smoothly, if not pleasantly, and 
the tyranny of the majority, in the House at least, found 
but little check. The Nemesis seems to lie in the disgust 
of the country with the unbridled license of its action. 

Does it not seem difficult to devise a system more suited 
at every step to produce corruption both rapid and deep ? 
If, as the evidence seems to show, there is but little direct 
corruption in Congress, it is a weighty testimony in favor 
of the universal suffrage of the country, which for Con- 
gress after Congress can keep the members straight under 
such circumstances of temptation. 

The Senate of the United States has been upheld as one 
of the most dignified bodies in the world, and as forming 
the conservative and steadying element in the government. 
But the logic of facts has, of late years, enforced doubts 
as to the soundness of this view. We have seen that the 
House of Representatives is surrounded by corrupting 
influences which tend steadily to lower its character, and 
that those influences are only partially kept in check by 
public opinion expressed through universal suffrage. We 
shall see later on that the State legislatures are even 
worse than Congress in this respect, and have fallen, and 
arc (ailing, distinctly below the average of public opinion. 
The necessity and the absence of leadership both tend to 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 399 

throw these bodies under the control of men skilled in 
political combination and intrigue, while the demand for 
any special qualities, especially in communities as mobile 
as ours, will always bring to the front men who possess 
those qualities in the highest degree. Now the highest 
place in the gift of the legislature is that of United States 
senator, and the occupant of the latter place is therefore 
pretty sure to be an accomplished master in all the intri- 
cacies of State politics. Such names as Quay, Gorman, 
Cameron, Hill, and Piatt will give an idea of the power 
wielded by senators in their respective States. 

It might be thought that the office of governor is, in 
many respects, as desirable as that of senator, but the 
former office is not in the gift of the legislature, but, at 
least nominally, in that of the people. The candidates 
for the governorship are indeed nominated by conventions 
manipulated by politicians ; but, after all, the people have 
to be reckoned with. 1 It may be said, therefore, in a 
general way, that the governors of States are likely to be 
men of higher character, but of less ability, than United 
States senators. This reasoning will be much strength- 
ened if it shall appear that the legislature is not merely 
the most powerful branch of the government, but more 
powerful than the people themselves, of whom it is by no 
means always representative or to whom always responsi- 
ble. Office-holders, elected by the legislature, are likely 
to wield more power than those elected by the people. 

The term of a senator, being six years, is longer than 
that of any elected officer of the federal government, or 
than that of any member of any State legislature or execu- 
tive. He is, therefore, correspondingly independent. As 
the legislature, however, upon which he must depend for 

1 The late Jay Gould is said to have cynically observed that it did not 
pay him to try to buy the electors. It was easier and cheaper to buy the 
legislators after they were elected. 



400 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

reelection, is a wholly different body from that to which 
he owed his first term, he must, if he desires reelection, 
keep a tight hold of State politics. As the Senate is 
renewed only by thirds in every two years its life never 
terminates as that of the House does with each Congress, 
but new-coming senators are speedily imbued with the 
spirit and trained in the traditions which are handed 
down in this permanent body. Being thus much better 
equipped than the House in the struggle for executive 
power the Senate is still farther strengthened by two attri- 
butes : the confirmation of the most important appoint- 
ments to office by the President, and its share in the 
treaty-making power. The Senate is therefore by far the 
most powerful branch of the government. To one who 
watches its proceedings the members appear like feudal 
lords, manifesting a certain degree of fear and respect 
towards each other, but defiant towards all the world 
besides. 

It may be said without exaggeration that the United 
States Senate is coming gradually and every year more 
and more to be made up of men who, not necessarily pos- 
sessing any qualities of statesmanship or any knowledge or 
experience of the conduct of government, have developed 
one talent amounting to genius, — that of manipulating, 
not to use the harsher term i corrupting,' State legislatures. 
When a professional politician, under the stimulus of the 
keenest competition, has carried this art to the highest 
point so far reached — though it is capable of indefinite 
evolution — the reward he seeks is a place in the United 
States Senate. Of course, in such hands, men who have 
reached the Senate for any other reasons are soon forced 
to give way under what is called the duty of supporting 
the party. And so it goes on till the culmination shall 
come in a battle of the giants, the selected champions in 
the science of political manipulation. What, meantime, 



xvii GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 401 

becomes of the public interest it is not difficult to con- 
jecture. 

The organization of the Senate is much like that of 
the House, that is, all the members are precisely equal. 
There is no leader or guide clothed with any authority or 
to whom they are disposed to show any deference. In 
fact, they are much more jealous than the members of the 
House of their prerogatives as representatives of equal 
States. The fact that it is 4 Hands off ! ' in all matters 
relating to their own States makes senators all the more 
disposed to leave a free hand to their fellow-members from 
other States. " The courtesy of the Senate " is a euphe- 
mistic and high-sounding phrase, which has grown up to 
express the careful avoidance among these equal poten- 
tates of any interference with each other's privileges, 
whether in appointments to office or otherwise in their 
respective States, and this with very little regard to the 
degree of detriment which the public interest may 
thereby suffer. 1 Log-rolling is accordingly even more 
characteristic of the Senate than of the House, though 
" lobbying " is probably less so, because senators, from the 
conditions of their office already indicated, are much more 
fitted than members of the House to do the work for 
themselves. 

The Senate, like the House, works by means of stand- 
ing committees. We have seen how any member of the 
House can introduce any number of measures; how all 
these measures are referred in mass to the standing com- 
mittees ; how the committees working without any effec- 

1 This is probably the explanation of the extraordinary attitude of the 
Senate towards the free coinage of silver. It is of great importance to 
the silver-producing States. It is not of special and separate importance 
to the other States. Therefore, the habit of supporting other States in 
their local wants in the expectation of a return in kind, in other words, 
"the courtesy of the Senate," is strong enough to overcome all sense of 
detriment to the country at large. 
2d 



402 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tive publicity are subjected to immense pressure from 
private and party interests ; how in the discussion and 
framing of legislation no person is admitted to take any 
effective part who can claim to represent the whole 
country, or is in any way responsible for the administra- 
tion of the government ; and how, when the committee 
reports are submitted to the House, it is practically impos- 
sible that there should be any debate, either intelligent in 
itself or of a kind to inform the country as to the character 
of measures and the motives of men. If now we consider 
that this procedure is almost exactly duplicated in the 
Senate we can imagine the confusion and uncertainty, 
the total absence of any consistent plan or continuity, 
the incoherence and impracticability of legislation, which 
must result from two bodies working in this way. 

If the Senate has an advantage in the confirmation of 
executive nominations and the treaty-making power, it 
may seem that this is, to some extent, offset by the exclu- 
sive right on the part of the House to originate bills for 
raising revenue. But the Senate has known how to over- 
come this also. All such bills sent by the House to the 
Senate may be altered or amended by the latter at their 
discretion, and must then go back to the House for con- 
sideration. If the House refuses to concur, a conference 
committee is appointed of a small number of members 
from each body. By postponing the return of bills till 
near the close of the session and placing their most expe- 
rienced members on the committee, the Senate is likely to 
have the best chance of getting its own way. 

There are two important particulars in which the Senate 
differs from the House. It forms the standing commit- 
tees by election instead of having them appointed by the 
presiding officer, and it has never made use of the pre- 
vious question or similar expedients for closing debate. 
The effect of these things upon legislation will be consid- 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 403 

ered later. The cause of this difference is the immediate 
object of interest, as showing the effect and importance of 
different modes of organization. The House is presided 
over by a Speaker elected by a majority of the members. 
As that majority can elect a Speaker who will be the obe- 
dient instrument of its will, and as the object of that 
majority is present power without much thought of future 
effect upon principles of government, it does not hesitate 
to arm the Speaker with the power of making up the com- 
mittees, and with whatever rules may be necessary to cut 
off debate and to force the minority to submit to its will. 
When the party minority becomes a majority in its turn, 
it is more than willing to adopt the weapons which have 
been forged for it by its opponents. 

It is commonly said that the reason why the Senate has 
never adopted these features of the House procedure is, 
that it is a smaller and more dignified body, and tends to 
preserve the traditions of mutual courtesy and greater 
freedom of debate. But experience shows that this is 
almost as inconvenient in a body of 90 men as in one 
of 360, and, moreover, that the Senate is quite as skilled 
in, and as ready to avail itself of, political tricks as the 
House is. The real reason is that it is presided over by 
the Vice-President of the United States, who is elected, 
like the President, by the whole country, is wholly extra- 
neous to and independent of the Senate, and cannot be 
converted into an instrument of the party majority. If 
by any change the Senate was allowed to choose its own 
presiding officer by a majority vote, it is safe to say that it 
would not be long before he would have the power of 
making up the standing committees, and that the rules of 
the Senate would provide for the suppression of debate 
and of the minority almost as completely as the rules of 
the House. It may serve the purpose of illustration to 
say that the Massachusetts Senate consists of 40 mem- 



404 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

bers as against 240 in the House, that the president of 
the Senate, elected by majority vote, has the appointment 
of its standing committees, and that the exercise of the 
previous question or its equivalent is not unknown. 

On the other hand, as the presiding officer has no author- 
ity or control over the Senate of the United States, and 
as there is nobody representing either the country as a 
whole or the administration of the government to exercise 
any other authority, that body has fallen into complete 
anarchy. The first meeting in extra session of the Fifty- 
fifth Congress furnished a notable illustration of the effects 
of organization. In the House, under the iron rule of 
Mr. Speaker Reed, was passed within two weeks the so- 
called Dingley Tariff Bill, perhaps the worst of the kind 
the country has ever had, and widely believed to be an 
adjustment in favor of powerful private interests which 
had advanced campaign funds for the Republican party. 
It was of great length and complexity of detail, yet two- 
thirds of it were never discussed at all, and the remainder 
in the scantiest and most superficial manner. The des- 
potism of the Speaker went so far that, though there were 
more than fifty committees of the new Congress to be 
made up, he refused to appoint more than two or three of 
the principal ones, thus suspending the whole business of 
the House, and compelling it to a continuous adjournment 
for a few days at a time. It was a tyranny of the majority 
such as has never been surpassed in this country. 

In sharp contrast to this picture the Senate spent two 
months in trying to get its committees elected by a pro- 
cess of compromise, and as much more time in excursions 
into a great variety of subjects, but chiefly foreign affairs. 
In this way it kept the tariff delayed by an appearance of 
debate for a farther time, when the matter was finally set- 
tled on July 2-1 by a conference committee of eight mem- 
bers from each house representing the very essence of 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 405 

bargain and intrigue. During all this time the business 
of the country was kept in an agony of uncertainty. Im- 
mense imports were hurried forward of articles on which 
the duties were to be raised if the new tariff passed, and 
the House, in exasperation that commerce should attempt 
to take care of itself, threatened to pass a retroactive 
clause by which the act was to include goods ordered 
from abroad months before. 

How completely the Speaker, apparently so powerful, is 
the slave of the majority appeared in the spring of 1898. 
Mr. Reed was a pronounced and determined opponent 
both of the war and of the annexation of Hawaii, but the 
majority swept him aside with contemptuous indifference. 

Much light will be thrown upon the points here noticed 
— as well as others to be subsequently discussed — by a 
quotation from another writer : — 

The House is not as strong and influential now as when Congress 
first met. Its highest prerogative, which the f ramers of the Constitu- 
tion regarded as the foundation of its authority, has been relinquished. 
Madison remarked : " The House of Representatives can not only re- 
fuse but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support 
of the government." In our time the spokesmen of the House plead 
its impotence as its excuse. At the close of the second session of the 
Fifty-fourth Congress the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, 
reviewing the work of the session, declared that " the General Defi- 
ciency Bill in recent sessions as it leaves the House, providing for 
legitimate deficiencies in the current appropriations for the support 
of the government, is transformed into a mere vehicle wherein the 
Senate loads up and carries through every sort of claims that should 
have no consideration by either branch of Congress except as inde- 
pendent bills reported from competent committees." He confessed 
that " the appropriations are in my judgment in excess of the legiti- 
mate demands of the public service." But he contended that this 
condition of affairs was not the fault of the party in power. " It is the 
result of conditions accruing out of the rules of the House and out of 
the so-called courtesies of the Senate, together with the irresponsible 
manner in which the executive submits to Congress estimates to meet 
expenditures for the conduct of the government." Admissions almost 
as abject as these are frequently made in the House. 



406 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

In its final development the committee system has completely de- 
stroyed the control of the houses over the national finances. Down to 
the year 1865 something of the nature of a budget existed, from the 
fact that all revenue and all appropriation bills were referred to the 
Ways and Means Committee. All the great revenue measures and all 
the vast appropriations required by the Civil War were reported by 
that committee. But in 1865 the committee on Appropriations was 
created and that branch of legislative business was transferred to it 
from the Ways and Means Committee. In 1880 the Agricultural 
Appropriation Bill was taken over by a committee of that name, and 
in 1883 the practice of having the River and Harbor Bill reported by a 
distinct committee was begun. In 1885 the wholesale distribution 
of the powers of the Appropriations Committee amongst other com- 
mittees took place. The Army Appropriation Bill and the Mili- 
tary Academy Bill were turned over to the committee on Military 
Affairs, the Diplomatic and Consular Appropriation Bill to the com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, the Post-office Appropriation Bill to the 
committee on Post-offices and Post Roads, the Naval Appropriation 
Bill to the committee on Naval Affairs, and the Indian Appropriation 
Bill to the committee on Indian Affairs. But six of the fourteen 
great annual appropriation bills remained in charge of the committee 
of Appropriations, the remaining appropriation bills, eight in num- 
ber, being turned over to seven other committees. Mr. Randall, who 
was chairman of the Appropriations Committee when its powers were 
thus mutilated, told the House at the time : " You will enter upon a 
path of extravagance you cannot foresee the length of or the depth of 
until we find the treasury of the country bankrupt." In ten years his 
prediction was fulfilled. The distribution of the appropriations made 
just so many additional points upon which local interests could mass 
their demands. The total appropriations (exclusive of pensions) 
for the decade 1887-96, as compared with the decade 1877-86, show 
an increase of $688,489,376. The appropriations had increased 46.43 
per cent while the population had increased 24.85 per cent. All sense 
of proportion between income and expenditure has been lost. The 
Fifty-third Congress, although well aware that the revenues of the 
government were inadequate to meet such an expenditure, voted ap- 
propriations amounting to $989,239,205. At the same time it refused 
to enable the government to borrow money to meet the obligations 
which Congress had so profusely created, and the government had to 
use the authority conferred upon it by an old statute not made for 
such an emergency and not suited to the occasion. Bonds of longer 
term and higher interest rate than were at all necessary had to be sold 
to enable the treasury to meet its engagements. The Fifty-fourth 
Congress, without having done anything to increase the revenue, in- 
creased the appropriations to over one billion of dollars. Never were 



xvn GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 407 

the exactions of local interests so monstrous as during this period. 
The largest River and Harbor Appropriation Bill ever reported in the 
history of the country was passed by the House without debate, and it 
was eventually passed by Congress over the veto of the President by 
a confederation of interests embracing members of all parties. To pre- 
serve the treasury from the bankruptcy prepared by Congress, gov- 
ernment bonds to the amount of $262,000,000 were sold. The blame 
of this shameful situation was bandied from one party to another, but 
there was a common agreement that it was a matter beyond the power 
of Congress to control. The House is not oblivious to the shame of 
its situation, but such is its subserviency to local interests that it is 
unable to practise any self-control. The best it can do is to put it out 
of its power to act at all by surrendering its liberty of action in cases 
where party interests make it necessary to impose restraint. From 
this condition of affairs has emerged the strangest system of control 
ever generated in political procedure — an absolute discretionary neg- 
ative upon action vested in the Speaker. This authority has grown 
up from force of party necessity and is extremely simple and absolute 
in mode of exercise. The Speaker simply refuses to recognize a mem- 
ber who has a proposition to make that is not acceptable to the Chair. 
This authority, which was to a large extent exercised by many pre- 
ceding Speakers, reached its full development under Speaker Carlisle, 
and he made it an effectual interdict upon legislation calculated to 
obtain the support of local interests in a way antagonistic to his party 
policy. Subsequent Speakers have exercised the same power quite 
as absolutely. It has become the practice for members to petition a 
Speaker to permit the House to consider its own business, and the 
Speaker does not hesitate to disregard such petitions even when 
signed by enough members to remove him from the chair and elect 
another in his place. Such an anomaly can be explained only by the 
fact that members value the protection thus afforded against a 
pressure of local interests injurious to the general welfare or to the 
national party organization. 1 

Note the downward steps. At first one committee, 
even though composed of a few local representatives, and 
wholly irresponsible for administration, was bound to 
adjust expenditure to income. Next, by means of two 
committees, expenditure is cut loose from income. Then 
there are eight separate committees, existing solely to 
see that their departments get enough money, without 

1 H. J. Ford, "Rise and Growth of American Politics," Chap. XX. 



408 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, xvn 

knowing or caring where it comes from. If the charac- 
ter and fate of governments are dependent on the conduct 
of their finances, what is to be expected from such a sys- 
tem as that ? 

Could there be a more powerful picture of the anar- 
chy resulting from government by a legislature ? Unless 
remedied by the establishment of strong and responsible 
executive power, it must lead just as certainly as the 
Long Parliament in England or the National Assembly 
in France to military despotism. 1 

1 In Chapter V. we have pointed out how in the British Parliament all 
financial proposals, whether of revenue or expenditure, must emanate 
from the ministry, no private member having any such power. Section 54 
of the British North America Act of 1867, providing for the government 
of Canada, says : — 

" It shall not be lawful for the House of Commons to adopt or pass any 
Vote, Resolution, Address, or Bill for the Appropriation of any part of the 
Public Revenue, or of any Tax or Impost, to any Purpose that has not 
been recommended to that House by Message of the Governor-General, in 
the Session in which such Vote, Resolution, Address, or Bill is proposed." 

It is evident what a vast difference such a restriction must make, not 
only in the finances, but in the whole government of a country. Observe, 
further, that it was imposed, not for any advantage to the mother country, 
of which there is obviously none, but because the British ministry and 
Parliament thought that it was necessary for the good government of 
Canada. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE (Continued) 

fTTHE effects of the organization and methods of opera- 
-*- tion of the government which have been described 
may be considered from two points of view : First, their 
action upon the character and the quality not merely of 
the men who seek and obtain situations in public life, but 
also upon the character and the conduct of the voters who 
are supposed to have the regulation of that public life ; 
and second, their action upon the work of government, 
both as regards legislation and administration. 

As far as two branches of the federal government are 
concerned, the executive and the judicial, the people of the 
United States pronounce directly only as to two individuals, 
the President and the Vice-President, of whom the latter 
may for the present be left out of the account. All the 
other offices, from the highest to the lowest, are filled 
directly or indirectly by appointment of the President, 
subject to control, to greater or less extent, directly by 
the Senate and indirectly by the House. The actual and 
the possible advantages of the presidential election have 
been pointed out, and also that these advantages have 
been almost counterbalanced by other influences tending 
in the opposite direction. In the legislative branch the 
people also elect one individual directly, a member of 
Congress from each district ; and two indirectly, senators 
through the legislature. What are the conditions pre- 
requisite to the election as members of Congress of men 
of the best ability and highest integrity of character ? 

409 



410 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Nine persons out of ten would answer at once, Intelli- 
gence, purity of purpose, and a sense of duty on the part of 
the voters. But those are only a part of what is required 
and a secondary part at that. Before them conies the 
question whether the offices are of such a nature that men 
of integrity and ability are willing to seek and accept them 
or are repelled by them to an almost prohibitory degree ; or 
whether, on the other hand, those offices present attrac- 
tion and large opportunities to men of bad character and 
inferior ability. It does not follow because a man is called 
senator or representative that he is therefore entitled to 
or receives honor. " The rank is but the guinea's stamp." 
It is the manner not merely in which he fulfils but in 
which the circumstances allow him to fulfil the duties of 
that office, which form the real test of his manhood. 
Another question is whether the conditions of public life 
are such as to give to the voters the means of readily test- 
ing the character and ability of the men to whom they 
have given their votes. 

It must be remembered that the majority and the best 
part of the voters are exceedingly busy in providing for 
themselves and their families ; that they have very little 
time and still less inclination to study the details of poli- 
tics ; that apart from very broad and strong abstractions 
such as patriotism or party it is only personality presented 
in a strong light which can move them, and, moreover, 
unless their passions or interests are directly involved, 
presented from the moral side of right or wrong. 

To test these conditions let us follow the career of a 
member of Congress. In some district of exceptionally 
good population the nominating convention selects a man 
of high personal character and antecedents and he is duly 
elected. He goes to Washington full of good intentions 
and accompanied by the best Avishes and expectations of 
his constituents. 



xviii GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 411 

The newly elected member entering the doors of the House for the 
first time, and with no more knowledge of its rules and customs 
than the more intelligent of his constituents possess, always experi- 
ences great difficulty in adjusting his preconceived ideas of congres- 
sional life to the strange and unlooked-for conditions by which he 
finds himself surrounded, after he has been sworn in and has become 
a part of the great legislative machine. Indeed, there are generally 
many things connected with his career in Washington to disgust and 
dispirit, if not to aggrieve, the new member. In the first place, his 
local reputation does not follow him to the federal capital. Possibly 
the members from his own State know him and receive him into full 
fellowship, but no one else knows him except as an adherent of this 
or that party or as a newcomer from this or that State. He finds 
his station insignificant and his identity indistinct. But this social 
humiliation which he experiences in circles in w T hich to be a con- 
gressman does not of itself confer distinction, because it is only to be 
one among many, is probably not to be compared with the chagrin 
and disappointment which come in company with the inevitable dis- 
covery that he is equally without title to weight or consideration in 
the House itself. No man, when chosen to the membership of a body 
possessing great powers and exalted prerogatives, likes to find his 
activity repressed, and himself suppressed, by imperative rules and 
precedents which seem to have been framed for the deliberate purpose 
of making usefulness unattainable by individual members. Yet such 
the new member finds the rules and precedents of the House to be. . . . 

Often the new member goes to Washington as the representative 
of a particular line of policy, having been elected, it may be, as an 
advocate of free trade or as a champion of protection ; and it is natu- 
rally his first care upon entering on his duties to seek immediate 
opportunity for the expression of his views and immediate means of 
giving them definite shape, and thrusting them upon the attention of 
Congress. His disappointment is, therefore, very keen when he finds 
both opportunity and means denied him. He can introduce his bill, 
but that is all he can do, and he must do that at a particular time 
and in a particular manner. If he supposes, as he naturally will, that 
after his bill has been sent up to be read by the clerk he may say a 
few words in its behalf, and in that belief sets out upon his long-con- 
sidered remarks, he will be knocked down by the rules as surely as he 
was on the first occasion when he gained the floor for a brief moment. 
The rap of Mr. Speaker's gavel is sharp, immediate, and peremptory. 
He is curtly informed that no debate is in order ; the bill can only be 
referred to the appropriate committee. 1 

1 Wilson, pp. 61 et seq., which see for an amusing account of the 
process by which under the rules all members are reduced to the dead 
level of uniformity. 



412 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Finding himself thus excluded from all influence in the 
House itself, and urged by duty and conscience, the new 
member will very likely try to accomplish something with 
the committees or even with the Speaker. If this some- 
thing is in the line of special advantages to any or all of 
his constituents, he will meet with more or less of con- 
sideration, because that is a bond of sympathy with every 
other member and is felt to be quite within his right. 
Or if, again, he has anything to offer which promises to 
be of advantage to his party, he may obtain a respectful 
hearing. But if he takes his stand on the ground of 
national or public interest, and attempts to set up that 
against the schemes which he sees going on about him, 
he will soon find that his interference is regarded as 
impertinent and that his efforts are baffled at every turn. 
We will suppose, however, that he brings from home 
reputation enough to be appointed on an important com- 
mittee, though this is extremely unlikely to result from 
any personal qualities of high character and ability but 
is much more dependent upon the degree of his knowledge 
and skill in local politics. It may happen, indeed, that 
he is engaged in a particular trade or profession and gets 
the appointment from his supposed knowledge of its 
wants which may be by no means identical with the 
public interest. But from whatever cause he gets the 
place, and though he may give his whole time and 
the hardest and most disinterested labor, he can derive 
no personal credit for the result. That is the work of 
an impersonal committee of which he is only one member. 
Even the chairman, whose name is usually attached to 
the bill reported, is not specially identified with it, his 
reputation depending much more on the skill displayed 
in piloting the bill through the House than upon the 
character of it. Our member, in his anxiety to do some- 
thing in return for the honor and the salary which his 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 413 

constituents have conferred upon * him, may give a great 
deal of time and thought to a speech upon the subject 
which especially interests him and perhaps them. He 
cannot deliver it in the House, unless perhaps on a Sat- 
urday when nobody is present or at some time when 
neither that nor any other business is specially on hand, 
but he can get leave to have it printed in the Congres- 
sional Record and send copies to his leading constituents. 
Everybody knows, however, that such a speech is abso- 
lutely in the air, and has little more effect on govern- 
ment policy than a reading of the Ten Commandments. 

At the end of the session the member returns home 
with a mortified consciousness of having neither said nor 
done anything to which he can appeal as a justification 
for his election. It may be that he is invited to address 
a meeting of his constituents with a general idea of giving 
an account of his stewardship. But he has nothing to 
say. To explain why he has been able to do nothing 
would be to exculpate himself by attacking the govern- 
ment of the country, which would be regarded as at once 
invidious and useless. All that he can do is to defend 
the conduct of his party, and the conduct of neither party 
has of late years been such that a man of honor and ability 
cares to take a very strong stand on behalf of it. His 
constituents, therefore, while retaining respect for his 
character, conclude that he has not much political apti- 
tude and so turn their attention to finding some other 
man of equally good character who can obtain better 
results, the result which he does obtain being in fact pre- 
cisely the same. 

We will turn next to an instance of a different kind. 
A young man leaves school or college with an ambition 
and intention to devote himself to politics, perhaps with 
aspirations of the best description. A short experience 
makes clear to him, and more quickly in proportion to 



! 



414 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

his ability, that success is not to be obtained by public 
service but by judicious appeals to personal influence and 
by skilful manipulation of caucuses, primary meetings, 
and nominating conventions. His first achievement is, 
perhaps, election to the State legislature, and the lesson 
which awaits him there will appear when we come to that 
subject. If he fails to learn that lesson he will probably 
return to private life, as there is an abundance of eager 
competitors. If he is equal to the work his next attempt 
will be for Congress. Arriving there he is not at all 
disconcerted by the reception he meets with. The idea 
has long since been taken out of him, if he ever had it, 
of accomplishing anything for the public welfare or of 
distinguishing himself or his district by his attitude 
towards public policy or statesmanship. His first care 
is to promote the special wants of his district — including 
particular attention to making his efforts known at home 
— and at the same time to forward, though not always 
with the same publicity, the private schemes of the most 
important, to himself, of his constituents, rich or poor. 
After these things comes his adherence to party and to 
the men most competent to hold the party together. He 
will exert himself to the same purpose at home, regarding 
measures much less in their relation to the welfare of the 
country than to the supremacy of the party with which 
his own interests are bound up. Log-rolling and lobby- 
ing are the two accomplishments in which the highest 
perfection is to be sought, since they are equally neces- 
sary for the passage of the highest and most beneficent 
legislation and for the most selfish of private schemes. 

When such a member returns home after the session 
has closed he has no difficulty in meeting his constituents. 
Being glib of speech, for that is almost a necessity of suc- 
cess and has probably helped to fill up the Congressional 
Record, there is an unlimited supply of generalities at his 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 415 

command as to the greatness of the American people, the 
value of our institutions, and the inestimable merits of 
the party to which he has the honor to belong as com- 
pared with the baseness and degradation of the party 
opposed. 

An important point to be noted is that the voters have 
very little to do with the selection of the candidates. 
That is done by a nominating convention, the voters hav- 
ing merely a choice between the candidates proposed "by 
the two great party conventions, or, if dissatisfied with 
both, of supporting the nominees of one or more frac- 
tional groups which are trying to work themselves into 
prominence. If, indeed, there were individuals who by 
displaying great qualities in public life served as it were 
as a precipitate to crystallize voters, these might unite in 
sufficient numbers to control the primaries ; but the whole 
organization of our government is such as to suppress this 
individuality, in the executive by excluding it from all 
voice in the guidance of legislation and all public respon- 
sibility for the conduct of government, and in the legis- 
lature by throwing all the work into impersonal committees 
and the still more impersonal body of the House as a 
whole, with complete freedom from responsibility or criti- 
cism by anybody connected with the government. It 
follows, therefore, that the work of a nominating conven- 
tion, instead of being guided from above, must be built up 
from below ; instead of a mass of voters imposing their 
choice from a common impulse of admiration and esteem, 
that choice is dictated by a few individuals skilfully and 
secretly playing upon motives of action of which the 
public knows nothing. 

If it is said, as it constantly is, that the voters should 
combine to prevent this and have only themselves to 
blame for evil results, the simple answer is that they can- 
not do that. There is nothing whatever to guide or con- 



41G THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

centrate their choice. Public life offers no means of test- 
ing and providing candidates. Any one of a hundred will 
do as well as any other, and no better. 

Public office means with us not something to do, but 
something to get , not a place in which a man can say and 
show that he has done great service to his fellow-citizens 
and has more than rendered an equivalent for what he has 
received, but one in which he gets a certain amount of 
distinction and a certain amount of pay, small for men of 
high character and ability, but large for those of a lesser 
caliber and for the equivalent rendered. 

Public office, again, means that however hard a man 
may work, and with whatever purity of motive, he can 
get no credit for either, because it must be divided with a 
more or less numerous and impersonal body in which his 
individuality is lost. On the other hand, in whatever of 
evil may be done by other members, he must share the 
blame of that which he is wholly unable to prevent. Is 
it not evident why good and able men are more and more 
driven from public life, and why bad men, of very differ- 
ent even if as great ability, are drawn into it, and that 
the voters, even with the best dispositions, are wholly 
unable to arrest this downward tendency ? 

This view of the case explains many things which seem 
otherwise inexplicable. Thus it was observed in the 
last chapter that at least one-half of each Congress con- 
sists of new members. From the point of view of the 
public service this seems so obvious a disadvantage as 
to excite surprise. But if we consider that it is not a 
question of public service at all, but of the advantage of 
the individual member, that it is not a question of some- 
thing to do but something to get, it is plain that it is 
not regarded among politicians as equitable that one man 
should have more than one term, or at most two terms, 
but that he should make way for other aspirants, and that 



xvm GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 417 

this rotation does not depend upon the voters, but upon 
the managers of a nominating convention. 

Again, a feature of our politics which excites the sur- 
prise of everybody who first encounters it, and which Mr. 
Bryce professes himself unable to understand, is the re- 
quirement expressed in the constitutions of some States 
with regard to their own legislatures, and which is a 
general practice in the case of Congress, that members 
shall be residents of the districts in which they are elected. 
It would be palpably absurd to restrict men in the employ- 
ment of physicians, lawyers, or business agents to inhab- 
itants of their own town, and it would be almost equally 
so in the case of a member of Congress if his real func- 
tion was to promote the best interest of the district. But 
if it is not something to do but something to get, if it is 
a question of the enjoyment of $5000 a year of public 
money and two years of winter residence in Washington, 
it is plain enough why the people of a district wish that 
such prizes should be kept strictly within their own 
limits. 

Once more, it is considered indelicate, if not improper, 
for any man to offer himself openly as a candidate for 
any office, though that does not prevent any number of 
schemers from working with all their might to get a 
nomination. If public office were a place where hard and 
good service was to be done for the public, there would 
be no more reason why a man should not ask for it than 
for any private employment by an individual or corpora- 
tion. But if it means a place which offers pecuniary emol- 
ument with no possibility of making an adequate return, 
an honorable man will no more think of offering himself 
as a candidate than he would of asking his neighbor to 
divide his fortune with him. But it is precisely the com- 
bination of nothing to do with something to get and the 
absence of responsibility, which attract a crowd of com- 

2e 



418 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

petitors of a kind making men of honor and ability still 
less willing to put themselves forward. 

Mr. Bryce, indeed, gives a different explanation. 

That no American dreams of offering himself for a post unless he 
has been chosen by the party is due not to the fact that few persons 
have the local preeminence which the social conditions of Europe 
bestow on the leading landowners of a neighborhood or on some 
great merchants and employers in a town, nor again to the modesty 
which makes an English candidate delay presenting himself as a 
candidate for Parliament until he has got up a requisition to himself 
to stand, but to the notion that the popular mind and will are, and 
must be, all in all; that the people must not only create the office- 
bearer by their votes, but even designate the persons for whom votes 
must be given. For a man to put himself before the voters is deemed 
presumptuous, because an encroachment on their right to say whom 
they will even so much as consider. ... A system for selecting can- 
didates is therefore not a mere contrivance for preventing party 
dissensions, but an essential feature of matured democracy. 1 

The reader who knows anything of party nominations 
will judge which account is most correct. 

At every step in Mr. Bryce's book problems arise which 
he explains in various ways, but which here meet with a 
simpler and fuller answer. 

Granted that politics has to become a gainful profession, may it 
not still be practised with as much integrity as other professions? 
Do not the high qualities of intellect, the ripe fruit of experience and 
study, win for a man ascendency here as in Europe ? Does not the 
suspicion of dishonor blight his influence with a public which is 
itself at least as morally exacting as that of any European country? 2 

The first question must be answered in the long run in 
the negative, because the processes of log-rolling and 
lobbying, which, as has been shown, are alone available 
for promoting legislation, blunt the edge of integrity 
from the start, and this indeed is true also with the other 
processes necessary under this system to secure nomina- 

1 Op. tit., Vol. II, Chap. LIX., p. 47. 
*Ibid., Chap. LVIL, p. 35. 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 419 

tion by a convention. To the second question it may be 
answered at once, No, they do not, for the reason that 
when by chance they find their way into a public body 
they are at once lost in an indistinguishable crowd ; that 
they meet with no recognition from fellow-members, each 
anxious only to make good his claim to an equal footing, 
from great party leaders quick to procure and make use 
of them, because there are none such, or from constituents 
from whom they are concealed by the impenetrable secrecy 
of committee rooms and the inevitable suppression of 
debate in the House. The third question calls for an 
equal, if less decided, negative, because the dishonor is, 
as it were, diluted by being spread equally over a number 
of persons of whom no one escapes his share. 

Take again the opening of Chapter LVIIL, Why the 
Best Men do not go into Politics ? 

"But," some one will say who has read the reasons just assigned 
for the development of a class of professional politicians, " you allow 
nothing for public spirit. It is easy to show why the prize of numer- 
ous places should breed a swarm of office-seekers; not so easy to 
understand why the office-seekers should be allowed to have this 
arena of public life in a vast country, a free country, an intelligent 
country, all to themselves. There ought to be patriotic citizens 
ready to plunge into the stream and save the boat from drifting 
towards the rapids. They would surely have the support of the mass 
of the people, who must desire honest and economical administration. 
If such citizens stand aloof there are but two explanations possible. 
Either public life must be so foul that good men cannot enter it, or 
good men must be sadly wanting in patriotism." This kind of 
observation is so common in European mouths as to need an explicit 
answer. The answer is twofold. 

In the first place, the arena is not wholly left to the professionals. 
Both the federal and the state legislatures contain a fair proportion 
of upright and disinterested men, who enter chiefly, or largely, from 
a sense of public duty, and whose presence keeps the mere profes- 
sionals in order. So does public opinion, deterring even the bad men 
from the tricks to which they are prone and often driving them when 
detected in a serious offence from place and power. 

However, this first answer is not a complete answer, for it must 
be admitted that the proportion of men of intellectual and social 



420 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

eminence who enter public life is smaller in America than it has been 
during the present century in each of the free countries of Europe. 
Does this fact indicate a want of public spirit? 

It might be added that while there are still many, 
perhaps the majority, of men of good character in public 
life, the tendency is steadily downward. Let us consider 
the reasons given by Mr. Bryce, in his second answer, for 
this state of things. 1. The want of a social and commer- 
cial capital. To be a federal politician you must live 
in Washington, that is, abandon your circle of home 
friends, your profession or business, your local public 
duties. 2. There is no class in America to which public 
political life comes naturally as it still does to a certain 
class in England. Nobody can get an easy and early start 
on the strength of his name and connections. 3. In Britain 
or France a man seeking to enter the higher walks of pub- 
lic life has more than five hundred seats for which he may 
stand. If his own town or county is impossible he goes 
elsewhere. In the United States he cannot. If his own 
district is already filled by a member of his own party there 
is nothing to be done, unless he will condescend to under- 
mine and supplant at the next nominating convention the 
sitting member. The fact that a man has served gives him 
no claim to be allowed to go on serving. In the West rota- 
tion is the rule. No wonder that when a political career is 
so precarious men of worth and capacity hesitate to em- 
brace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their 
life's course by a mere accident. 4. Politics are less inter- 
esting than in Europe. The two kinds of questions which 
most attract eager or ambitious minds, questions of foreign 
policy and of domestic constitutional changes, are generally 
absent, happily absent. Currency and tariff questions and 
financial affairs generally, internal improvements, the regu- 
lation of railways and so forth, are important, no doubt, but 
to some minds not fascinating. There are no class privi- 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 421 

leges or religious inequalities to be abolished. Religion, 
so powerful a political force in Europe, is outside politics 
altogether. 5. The division of legislative authority be- 
tween the Federal Congress and the legislatures of the 
States further lessens the interest and narrows the oppor- 
tunities of a political career. In the United States foreign 
politics and commercial questions belong to Congress, so 
no one will be led by them to enter the legislature of his 
State. Social reforms and philanthropic enterprises be- 
long to the State legislatures, so no one will be led by 
them to enter Congress. 6. In America there are more 
easy and attractive openings into other careers than in 
most European countries. The settlement of the great 
West, the making and financing of railways, the starting 
of industrial or mercantile enterprises in the newer States, 
all offer a tempting field to ambition, ingenuity, and self- 
confidence. 7. The fascination which politics has for 
many people in England is largely a social fascination. 
Those who belong by birth to the upper classes like to 
support their position in county society by belonging 
to the House of Commons or by procuring through it 
a seat in the House of Lords. Those who spring from 
the middle class expect to find by means of politics an 
entrance into a more fashionable society than they have 
hitherto frequented. Such inducements scarcely exist in 
America. A congressman, a State governor, a city mayor, 
gains nothing socially by his position. 

There is one explanation which goes farther than all 
these put together. It is the absorption of all the powers 
of the government by the legislature. As regards the 
executive branch this means that the highest officials, the 
members of the Cabinet, having no voice in legislation, 
are mere instruments for carrying out the orders they 
may get from Congress, a position which men of the 
highest character and ability will not accept, much less 



422 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

seek, or if they do are much more likely to lose than gain 
reputation. Even the President, as we have seen, must 
exert his power in underhand ways rather than by open 
and manly influence. In the legislative branch it means 
a complete impossibility of obtaining personal reputation 
and nearly as much so of accomplishing any good, while 
there is almost an equal certainty of incurring loss of 
reputation from a fraction of blame for evil which one is 
wholly unable to prevent, and all this in a position which 
is to be reached through fierce competition with a crowd 
of eager schemers anxious to secure the material gain and 
caring for nothing else. 

Compare the weight of these different reasons. Wash- 
ington is one of the pleasantest places of residence in the 
country, especially in winter, and is constantly becoming 
more so, its attraction being rather increased by the 
absence of any commercial element. With the modern 
facilities of travel prominent lawyers and merchants can 
leave the details of business to their younger associates 
and go home to attend to anything important. As it is, 
men of business think very little of travelling one or even 
two thousand miles on any special business. As to local 
public duties there is always a plenty of aspirants of a 
good class to take charge of them. 

The absence of a class which has a prescriptive right 
to political positions is not necessarily a drawback, as it 
allows freer play to individual ability. It. is well known 
how quickly Napoleon's marshals rose from the humblest 
positions, and in our own Civil War generals of the first 
class came forward within four years from the most com- 
plete obscurity. If civil life gave anything like such 
opportunities for the projection of individuality instead 
of totally suppressing it, if the display of integrity and 
self-sacrifice, of ability and devotion to the public service, 
could be made as conspicuous and as thoroughly identi- 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 423 

fied with persons, and the same was equally true of the 
reverse qualities, dishonesty, selfishness, stupidity and 
the subordination of public to private interests, there is 
no reason why the same results should not follow, at least 
to a great degree, as in war. The sheep would quickly 
be separated from the goats. 

The restriction of membership to residents of the same 
districts with the electors is as we have seen a conse- 
quence of the fact that election does not mean service to 
do, but a prize to get. Probably the selection in any 
event would hardly go out of State lines, though even this 
limit might be overcome, but each State has from two up 
to nearly forty members. If constituencies had direct 
and palpable cause to be proud or ashamed of their repre- 
sentatives before the whole country, they would soon seek 
to enlarge their field of choice, and the rivalry between 
States would act as a powerful stimulus. 

No doubt politics are less interesting in this country 
than in Europe, but that is on account of the mode of 
treatment. Many a man in the United States spends 
hours in reading parliamentary reports in the London 
Times who will turn with contempt from the Congres- 
sional Record, which it is doubtful if any number of per- 
sons read at all. In this great country with its variety 
of interests, even excluding foreign politics and including 
only the limited subjects of the federal government, 
there are still topics enough to attract the attention of the 
people. But in the one case it is a drama in which a few 
leading statesmen, well known to the country and acting 
in concert, plan out and direct the lines upon which the 
government is to be conducted under the keen and watch- 
ful criticism of the opposition. In the other case it is 
a confused Babel, in which a multitude of pawns are 
struggling each to raise himself on the shoulders of his 
neighbors in a conflict which the whole country knows 



424 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

to be totally without meaning, while a number of com- 
mittees are making frantic efforts under cover of dark- 
ness to get some appearance of common sense out of the 
thousands of freaks and caprices, of private jobs and bids 
for popularity which are heaped upon them, and all this 
solely to win credit for the Republican and Democratic 
parties by hanging on to the skirts of which men may be 
lifted to the temporary enjoyment of salary and official title. 
No doubt, again, other careers in the United States 
offer greater attractions than politics, and Mr. Bryce does 
no more than justice to the qualities of our people when 
he says : " No class strikes one more by its splendid prac- 
tical capacity than the class of railroad men. It includes 
administrators, rulers, generals, diplomatists, financiers of 
the finest gifts." But the difference consists in the oppor- 
tunities for, and in the direct reward of, personal exertion. 
Nor is this to be measured by the pecuniary standard 
alone. Probably there is no country in the world where 
so much hard work in the public service could be obtained 
for little or no money if the want were made up in honor. 
Since there is no class distinction, no honor to be won by 
mere position, and since wealth, though it brings power 
and luxury, adds very little in public respect and esteem, 
the thirst for personal distinction is very great. Thou- 
sands of men have made independent fortunes early in life 
but can find no pursuit in which to expend their energies 
except in continuing to heap up riches. Thousands of 
rich men's sons, of the kind who came forward to give 
their services to the country during the Civil War, though 
carefully educated, have no choice but lives of idle pleas- 
ure, or of making more money. They would eagerly en- 
gage in hard work in public life if they could thereby 
gain the respect and confidence and deference of their 
fellow-citizens. But the reputation to be won is limited 
in degree and bad in kind. 



xvni GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 425 

The same is true of social distinction. The opportuni- 
ties are less than in Europe, but the ambition, especially 
among women, is just as great. It needs but little ac- 
quaintance with the life of our great cities to see how 
keenly social position is canvassed and sought for. At 
present there are two bases on which it rests, — wealth and 
religion. The Church, particularly in the West, while 
ignored by the State is far from being so by society. A 
third and perhaps the strongest element might be found 
in public life, if those admitted to it were tested by high 
personal character and ability. But the reverse is the 
case, and the surroundings for the most part of those who 
are found there are not such as confer any social advan- 
tage upon men, and still less upon women. 

In short, the one comprehensive explanation why the 
best men do not enter politics is more adequate than 
all of those given by Mr. Bryce. The confusion insep- 
arable from a body of 356 men, all upon a footing of 
equality, without leaders and without discipline, results in 
a complete suppression of individuality. Good men can 
accomplish nothing because their isolated efforts are fruit- 
less, they have nobody to rally around, and they can get 
no credit even for these efforts. On the other hand, the 
situation is peculiarly suited to the operations of intrigue, 
in which bad men are much more successful than good, 
while yet the good men must bear their share of blame. 
Seats in Congress are obtained through nominating con- 
ventions, nomination being equivalent to election by one 
party or the other. The object of the politician must be, 
therefore, first to get the nomination, and second to see 
that his party is so predominant that nomination shall be 
equivalent to election. Both these results are obtained by 
processes to which good men in the long run will not 
stoop, but which are not at all repugnant to men who 
seek only their own personal advantage irrespective of 



420 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the public welfare. It follows, therefore, that our politi- 
cal methods are such as to steadily drag down the quality 
of public men, and that no efforts of the electorate, how- 
ever intelligent or however devoted they may be, can 
more than temporarily check this tendency. It will be 
seen later that these remarks as to the House of Repre- 
sentatives apply still more strongly to the Senate. 

If such is the effect of our political methods upon those 
elected, what is it upon the voters themselves ? Through- 
out this work one of the main principles put forward is 
that a democracy, if it is to work together for good, must 
be organized, disciplined, and trained just as much as an 
army ; that it must have strong and tried leaders whom 
it can look to and rely upon with confidence, doing with 
undoubting faith and energy many things which its mem- 
bers do not understand because its leaders tell it to do 
them ; that it must have frequent and effective opportu- 
nities of testing and judging those leaders, so as to have a 
basis for its faith ; that it is by this process that men 
acquire confidence in each other, so that in time of need 
they can put out their strength in behalf of the right ; 
and that only through this enthusiasm for personality 
identified with measures, with good legislation and sound 
administration, can anything like good work be got out 
of universal suffrage. 

If the voters, on the other hand, see in the national 
government only two bodies, one of 356 and the other of 
90 men, in a state of disorganization and chaos, without 
any leaders or authority to whom they pay deference, 
engaged in a confused struggle for prominence, and doing, 
so far as the public can see, no business at all ; if the 
voters see that the majority and minority are held together 
only by the names of Republican and Democrat, having 
about as much significance as the green and blue flags 
which divided the factions in the last years of the Byzan- 



xviii GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 427 

tine Empire ; if the voters are told and know that the pre- 
tence of debate in Congress is a sham, that the real work 
is concealed in the committee rooms, and that Washing- 
ton swarms with the agents of private interests, the traces 
of whose presence are only too apt to be found in the 
resulting legislation ; if these voters find year after year 
that the only candidates offered for their votes are so 
merely as nominees of the Republican or Democratic par- 
ties, such nominations being obtained more and more by 
a process of wire-pulling and caucus manipulation, or if 
by chance they do get a man of high personal character 
that he disappears at once in the promiscuous crowd at 
Washington ; if the mass of the voters find that the 
richer and educated classes withdraw more and more 
from and speak with contempt of politics, while they 
themselves are continually scolded at for not electing 
better men, — is it any wonder that these voters become 
disgusted and indifferent, that in their turn they ab- 
stain from politics and devote themselves to their private 
affairs ? 

Suppose, again, that the state of affairs at Washington 
is repeated almost exactly in every State and city of the 
Union ; that, after being exhausted by scourgings and 
exhortations in national elections, the voters are called 
on for fresh exertions in their several States ; that they 
are asked to choose an executive simply because he is a 
Republican or a Democrat, though it is extremely difficult 
to say what is the difference, while he is personally en- 
tirely colorless and without interest to them, and a legis- 
lature from among a host of eager aspirants for place, 
divided only by the same party names and presenting 
either before or after election no other claims to consider- 
ation. Suppose that having fulfilled their duties to the 
State, the voters are then summoned to those of a city, 
in which the name of mayor has come to be almost synony- 



428 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

raous with impotence and that of alderman with corrup- 
tion, while still the repeated names of Republican and 
Democrat are their only basis of election. Next suppose 
that over this whole labyrinth of politics, from Washing- 
ton down through the States and cities, there hangs a dark 
cloud of suspicion and distrust ; that incessant rumors of 
corruption and of the powerful influence of the lobby taint 
the atmosphere both of the executive and the legislature, 
involving every member of each in almost equal condem- 
nation, which seems justified by the acknowledged pre- 
dominance of special legislation and of private interest. 
Is it any wonder that the voters become more and more 
indifferent and apathetic, and can this be fairly made a 
charge against universal suffrage? 

It may be answered that this is just the real charge 
against universal suffrage, that it allows such a state of 
things to exist. But if this is a direct result of practical 
though not formal suppression of executive power and the 
absorption of all government by the legislature, can the 
millions of voters be expected to understand and apply 
the remedy for that ? That is work for the educated and 
well-to-do classes, and when once they have worked out 
the idea and the remedy, have made a formal appeal to 
the masses of the people for support and met with a dis- 
tinct and sustained refusal, then will begin the time for 
a justified denunciation of the latter. But that is just 
what those classes refuse to do. A small part of them 
still exert and associate themselves to urge the people to 
improve public affairs in details and on their present basis, 
but the great majority more and more withdraw from poli- 
tics even to the extent of not going to the polls, lift up 
their hands in horror at the consequences of intrusting 
power to the ignorant multitude, and console themselves 
by reflecting that the climax of evil will not be reached 
in their time. 



xviii GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 429 

And here is just the greatest danger of all, in the loss 
of mutual confidence and cooperation in the different 
classes which make up the nation. We know what the 
French people had become at the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, under the centuries of rule of their kings combined 
with the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, what 
the same influences had wrought in Spain, and what 
southern Italy became under the Spanish Bourbons. We 
know also what the working together in Great Britain of 
the different classes in resistance to the Crown and after- 
wards in developing under it free parliamentary govern- 
ment has made of her people, resulting, among other 
things, in a colonial empire such as no nation, not even 
Rome in her palmiest days, has ever been able to show. 
A democracy needs this element more than any other 
condition of society, to keep down the jealousies and 
rivalries excited by a complex civilization and by the 
extremes and rapid alternation of wealth and poverty. 
If a firm and steady government, according to a uniform 
and consistent system of law, shall allow the freest possible 
play to social aspirations, repressing with a strong hand 
but on manifest principles of justice and the public inter- 
est every step towards social violence ; if the rich and 
powerful show themselves ready to assume public station 
under conditions which make clear to the whole nation 
that they are actuated, not necessarily by a spirit of 
philanthropy and self-sacrifice, but by a broad conscious- 
ness that their own interest is identical with the public 
welfare ; if, when one set of men passes from office another 
set, already tried by methods which the people can see 
and understand, stands ready to take their places and 
carry on the work, even with a change of party ; — then the 
masses will remain cheerful and contented even in hard 
and narrow lives, will resist social disorders, and be ready 
to put forth their united strength in time of need. No 



430 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

school education can replace or compare with such a one 
as this. 

But if the government is loose and capricious ; if law 
as well as administration is changing and unsteady ; if 
private interests get the upper hand, and the people im- 
bibe the idea that they are being sacrificed though they 
do not know how ; if the men in public life are believed 
to be caring much more for the interests of themselves and 
their powerful supporters than for those of the people at 
large ; if the only personalities whom the people can see 
are regarded by them with distrust and contempt ; — then 
the road is straight, even if more or less long, to revolu- 
tion and military despotism. No amount of common 
school education will prevent a people under such circum- 
stances from sinking into discontent and despair, and from 
a readiness to join in, or at least to submit to, outbreaks 
of violence. Unfortunately, we shall find a plenty of 
practical illustrations in this direction. 

In the words already quoted from a French writer : 1 — 

For if the nations make governments after their image, it is still 
more true that governments give to the people their virtues in the 
long run, and their vices with a terrible promptitude. 

However that may be, it may well be maintained that 
it is universal suffrage which to-day is keeping up the 
character of the government, and that, but for the re- 
straints imposed by it, our government would be a great 
deal worse than it is now. It is frequently said that a 
government cannot be better than the people over whom 
it is placed. Possibly ; but it may be a great deal worse, 
and there is no more than justice in the words of Mr. 
Bryce that — 

what the legislatures of the worst States show is not merely the 
need for the existence of a sound public opinion, for such a public 

i See Chap, XIV,, p. 310. 



xvin GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 431 

opinion exists, but the need for methods by which it can be brought 
into efficient action upon representatives, who, if they are left to 
themselves and are not individually persons with a sense of honor 
and a character to lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they 
could be in private. 1 

1 "American Commonwealth," Vol. I., Chap. XLV., p. 539. 



CHAPTER XIX 

GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE (Continued) 

T~N the last two chapters we have considered the organi- 
-*- zation of our government and its effect upon the char- 
acters both of the electors and the elected. We have now 
to examine its effect upon legislation and administration. 
For this purpose two features are to be kept in mind. 
The first is that every member of either branch of the 
legislature is at liberty to introduce a bill upon any sub- 
ject he pleases, — with the single exception, more apparent 
than real, that bills for raising revenue must originate in 
the House of Representatives, — and that all of such bills 
stand, so far as weight of authority goes, upon a precisely 
equal footing. The second point to be noted is that 
neither the President nor any member of his Cabinet has 
any right, not merely to introduce or propose bills but 
even to criticise them publicly ; in other words, that no 
person representing the whole country, or who is respon- 
sible for the administration of the government, has a single 
word to say about any proposed legislation till, having 
passed both houses, it is presented for the President's 
signature, when he must either accept or reject it. 

The result of the first condition is that there is no 
single subject within the limits of the Federal Constitu- 
tion which may not within every recurring }*ear be brought 
up for the most revolutionary treatment. It may be, in- 
deed it most probably is, true that nothing will be done, 
but the mere proposal to do something is enough to alarm 
and to a greater or less extent paralyze the interests which 



chap, xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 433 

are involved. Take, for example, the tariff, and, for the 
moment, irrespective of the questions of protection or free 
trade. The business of the country can adapt itself to 
high duties or to low duties, but what it can never en- 
counter with successful results is constantly changing 
duties. Now not only has the tariff been frequently and 
actually changed in the last fifty years, but it is absolutely 
impossible to say at the opening of any session of Congress 
whether the tariff will or will not and in what particulars 
or to what extent it may be changed. A resolution as to 
any one article referred to the committee of Ways and 
Means — and it is perfectly certain that such will not be 
wanting — is enough to open the whole subject, and once 
it is in possession of that committee every resource of log- 
rolling and lobbying will be exhausted by the private in- 
terests contending for advance or reduction, not to speak 
of enthusiasts who are working for what, according to 
their lights perfect or imperfect, they believe to be for 
the public welfare. 

And here the second condition comes into play. Of the 
committee which has exclusive control of the subject every 
member represents a district and no more. The chairman 
holds his place by gift of the Speaker, either because he 
represents a powerful local interest or is a man of weight 
and influence in the party, which is of course the same as 
that of the Speaker. Suppose this interest to be manu- 
factures, or shipping, or banking, or wool-growing, or 
sugar-raising. It is perfectly natural that the chairman 
should regard the welfare of the country as identified 
with the success of that particular interest and should 
bend all his efforts to promote it. But there are other 
members of the committee of both parties just as much 
convinced of the importance of their local interests. The 
perfectly logical result of this is not that all of these in- 
terests should be weighed in the scales of the national 

2f 



434 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

welfare, but that concessions to one set should be pur- 
chased by concessions to another. Next come those who, 
animated by a real desire to benefit the country, have yet 
to employ precisely the same methods as the others, 
though, as has been shown, with a decided disadvantage. 
On an even if not a better footing than any of them come 
the agents of powerful private interests, and it is these 
which constitute the greatest danger. 

It has been shown that the only cement which holds a 
majority of the House together is party and that the names 
of the two great parties, Republicans and Democrats, have 
in themselves and at the present time no meaning at all. 

In former days it was the offices of the government 
service which furnished the motive power, but such meas- 
ure of civil service reform as has been achieved has greatly 
diminished this resource and it has been replaced by the 
obvious substitute of money. There can be no question 
that bribery in elections of late years has greatly increased. 
It was publicly stated that Mr. John Wanamaker, head of 
the great Philadelphia dry-goods house, was made Post- 
master-General under President Harrison in consideration 
of his having furnished four hundred thousand dollars 
from his own or the contributions of others towards the 
party campaign fund. There is no source from which so 
much money can be obtained as from the men who are 
seeking for high protective duties upon great staple arti- 
cles, whether so-called raw materials — sugar, wool, iron, 
copper, and so forth — or manufactures of dry goods, 
hardware, drugs, liquors, and the like. It is quite natu- 
ral, therefore, that the Republican party, which has had 
control of the government substantially for the last thirty 
years, should pose to-day as the advocate of high protec- 
tion, an obvious reason for this being that experience has 
taught them where the sinews of party warfare were to 
come from. There is no pretence except in the campaign 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 435 

speeches of party orators and the tirades of party news- 
papers that the duties are adjusted with an eye to the 
welfare of the country. In like manner when the tidal 
wave of disgust with the Republicans in 1890 gave to the 
Democrats the executive and both houses of the legisla- 
ture, though the main cause of their wretched failure was 
undoubtedly the loss for a generation of the experience of 
party discipline, the result was not a little helped by their 
enforced attitude in favor of a reduction in the tariff and 
their consequent rigid exclusion from the graces of the 
great interests which hold the purse-strings. 

If now we compare what has been said of the quality of 
men who naturally gravitate towards Congress with the 
influences which govern their work when they get there, 
we can find abundant explanation for our failures in gov- 
ernment without visiting our condemnation upon universal 
suffrage. 

It remains to consider the relation of administration to 
tariff legislation thus obtained, and it will serve as an illus- 
tration of the working of the whole government. The 
President can by message urge upon Congress in general 
terms an advance or reduction or a simplification of cus- 
toms duties, but he can do no more, while even so much 
is very likely to excite resentment. He would not think 
of entering into details which would probably win for 
him only ridicule and humiliation. The Secretary of the 
Treasury can, if he pleases, plead the wants of his depart- 
ment before the committee, where he will be treated with 
a certain condescension as a suppliant and a subordinate, 
having considerably less influence than any great private 
interest, first on account of jealousy of executive interfer- 
ence, and then because he is not backed by any pecuniary 
service to the party. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that our customs admin- 
istration is full of contradictions, absurdities, and oppor- 



436 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tunities for fraud, almost more detrimental to the business 
of the country than the details of the tariff itself, and 
which yet cannot be exposed or corrected, except through 
an investigating committee, an instrument of government 
worth examining by itself in this connection. As there 
is nobody in either house of Congress who has anything 
to do with administration, or can be called to account for 
it, which is equally true of the standing committees, and 
inasmuch as, even if the party majority could be assumed 
to be responsible, a vote of censure upon it would imply a 
contradiction in terms, there are no facts upon which the 
opposition as a whole or any criticising member can pro- 
ceed. The only way, therefore, is to move for an investi- 
gating committee which the majority, knowing its utter 
futility, is generally quite willing to grant. The commit- 
tee, which on the part of the House is made up by the 
Speaker, or elected in the Senate on the same party basis 
as all others, consists of men who have almost certainly 
no experience of administration, and as little of judicial 
investigation, while they proceed upon no legal rules of 
evidence. What inquiries they make, therefore, are 
rambling and desultory. After some weeks, or perhaps 
months, of delay and expense they make a report to Con- 
gress. But that body has meantime passed on to some- 
thing else, and lost all interest in the subject. Apart 
from this it is so evident from the start that the report 
will be governed by party considerations that it is received, 
if it gets any attention at all, by Congress and the country 
with a smile of contempt, serving still further to depre- 
ciate the government in the eyes of the people. But even 
if the investigation was of the most impartial and search- 
ing kind, if it contained the gravest charges and the most 
urgent recommendations for reform, Congress is still just 
where it was before the committee was appointed. There 
is nobody to whom the charges can apply, and nobody 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 437 

whose business it is to take the reforms in hand. The 
President and the Secretary of the Treasury cannot be 
reached except by impeachment, and impeachment, besides 
being a wholly disproportionate instrument, like using a 
steam hammer to crack a nut, does not meet the case. 
The punishment of an individual will not reform a system. 
There is no way except to refer the report to a standing 
committee, to be buried in the unmarked grave which re- 
ceives the thousands of bills and resolutions awaiting the 
same fate. Could there be a greater caricature of govern- 
ment ? 

There is nothing which in a sound party man, espe- 
cially a Republican, that is, a member of the party which 
has carried on our government for the last thirty years, 
excites greater rage and scorn than a comparison of our 
own with British methods of government in any way to 
the advantage of the latter. It is stigmatized as un- 
American and unpatriotic in depreciating our institu- 
tions. Such childishness cannot of course be taken into 
account in attempting a scientific analysis. We are con- 
stantly importing English machinery for our manufac- 
tures, and exporting agricultural implements, watches, 
and other fruits of our ingenuity. If the English have 
anything political to be adopted with advantage, which 
is of course a thing to be proved, are we so foolish as to 
reject it because we did not invent it ? Such jealousy 
further overlooks the fact that whether we like it or not, 
the principles of our institutions were derived from Great 
Britain. Why should we reject a comparative study of 
their different modes of development? 

Whether the system of free trade has been of advan- 
tage to Great Britain on the whole may be open to ques- 
tion, but there can be none as to the benefit which her 
commerce has derived from the stability of a policy 
which, during half a century, while constantly taking 



438 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

off customs duties, may be said to have never imposed a 
single one, unless for purposes of revenue, even the duties 
on liquors being offset by an internal excise. Of course 
many of the landowners are at times clamorous for a duty 
upon foreign grain, but the fear or the hope of it never 
affects business in the least because everybody knows that 
if it ever comes at all it must be the result of a long agi- 
tation. It cannot be proposed by any member of Par- 
liament putting forward any plan he fancies, and then 
lobbying it through by working up a majority. It must 
be done by getting a parliament and a ministry elected 
for that purpose, and then by having that ministry, under 
its responsibility to the whole country for the course of 
government, prepare and submit a bill, which bill and no 
other will be discussed for months in public, both as to 
principle and details, so that the people can understand 
both the measure and the men who advocate and oppose 
it. If it is ever passed it will be because that is the 
deliberate decision of the country, of which there are at 
present no signs. 

A few years ago occurred an interesting illustration of 
the effect of leaving the control of the tariff, at least as 
regards initiation, in the hands of men who act for the 
whole country, and are responsible for the administration 
of the government. The French and German govern- 
ments allowed a considerable bounty upon the export of 
refined sugar, and the English markets were flooded with 
this product. The great refiners represented to the gov- 
ernment that their business was ruined by such competi- 
tion and asked for a duty to offset this bounty. To a 
committee of Congress this would have seemed a reason- 
able demand, and, especially if backed by a handsome 
contribution to the campaign fund, might easily have 
found its way as an item in a complex bill. The Eng- 
lish ministry, under a lively sense of their responsibility 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 439 

to the country, replied that the first thing was to ascer- 
tain the facts. So they sent out an inquiry to the makers 
of jam, preserves, confectionery, etc., and found that 
though these could individually bear no comparison in 
capital and importance with the sugar-refiners, yet col- 
lectively they far exceeded the whole of them in these 
respects, and that the proposed duty would deprive not 
only them but their customers of the great advantage 
which foreign governments were good enough to bestow 
upon them at the expense of their own taxpayers. The 
answer was complete and final. 

Of the social revolution involved in the first parliamen- 
tary reform, an account has already been given. 1 But one 
hardly less far-reaching occurred in the repeal of the Corn 
Laws shortly after. The English policy for a century had 
been to protect the great landowners by taxing the food 
of the people. The great manufacturing cities which 
had grown up determined' that this should cease. If the 
struggle had been conducted by mutual abuse and exas- 
peration, the materials for bloodshed and civil war were 
abundant. But again the same machinery came into 
play, — a ministry standing as arbiter between classes pre- 
pared definite bills for the gradual repeal of the duties 
upon grain. The upper classes, after free discussion of 
the alternatives before them, accepted their fate, involv- 
ing a peaceful change in the whole social conditions of 
the English people. 

It is not necessary to discuss whether free trade in 
grain has or has not been beneficial to the whole people of 
Great Britain. Two points only are here laid stress upon : 
first, that in an aristocratic country like the Great Britain 
of that day, where legislation for a century and a half had 
been always in favor of the owners of land, a complete 
revolution was made on behalf of manufacturers and 
i See Chap. VI. 



440 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tradespeople and the multitude dependent on them, and 
was accepted without violence ; and, second, that the pol- 
icy thus adopted has been maintained for half a century 
without fear or prospect of change and with a resultant 
stability which has of itself been of immense advantage 
to the country. 

The next illustration of the difference between a gov- 
ernment carried on by executive power responsible to the 
legislature and the people, and a government carried on 
by a despotic legislature, may be found in what is known 
as civil service reform. Down to 1830 very few forced 
changes had been made in the civil service of the United 
States, and those not for political purposes. The politi- 
cal use of offices was begun by President Jackson for the 
purpose of bending Congress to his will. But with the 
combined greed, ambition, and predominance of Congress 
this condition was quickly reversed, and the offices formed 
a permanent weapon with which to reduce the President 
to subjection to party purposes. The scandal and disgrace 
which this state of things brought upon the country in 
the thirty years preceding the close of the war are familiar 
to those who lived at that time, and may be learned now 
from the publications of the reform organizations. The 
first attempt at reform came from Hon. Thomas A. 
Jenckes of Rhode Island, who in a committee report to 
Congress in 1868 set forth the whole subject. In 1871 
Congress passed the first act for a civil service commis- 
sion to investigate the evils and provide a remedy through 
a system of competitive examination. By incessant public 
agitation for the next fifteen years there were wrung from 
a reluctant Congress scanty appropriations and a grudg- 
ing extension of the number of offices to which the reform 
should be applied. But the hostility of Congress was 
so pronounced that the appropriations and the number of 
competitive offices were kept at the lowest possible point, 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 441 

and there was a constant possibility and an actual fear 
that Congress might abolish the commission altogether, 
particularly as public attention, wearied with constant 
repetition, had been turned away to other topics. By 
the report of the Civil Service Commission in 1893 it 
appeared that there were over two hundred thousand 
government offices to be filled by appointment, of which 
forty-three thousand, including, of course, the most im- 
portant, were subject to competitive examination. That so 
much remained to be done, as well as the complaint of ob- 
stacles interposed to the working of the system, is to be 
attributed to the undisguised opposition of Congress, held 
in check only by public opinion. 

The explanation of this opposition is very simple. It 
has been shown that in the absence of leadership and dis- 
cipline in Congress the only cement by which any consid- 
erable number of the equal units can be held together 
consists in adherence to party, and that the party names 
of Republican and Democrat have absolutely no signifi- 
cance in themselves but rest upon a conciliation of private 
interests. Short of direct bribery there is no resource 
which could stimulate the energy and coherence of party 
effort equal to the government offices, and even with 
direct bribery it would be scarcely possible that such 
immense amounts of money could be obtained for explicit 
application to one common end. Hon. George William 
Curtis, who was the first chairman of the Civil Service 
Commission, said in an address before the National Civil 
Service League in June, 1888 : — 

There is no more reason in requiring a postmaster to agree with 
the President of the United States in political opinion than in requir- 
ing a railway engineer to agree with the religious views of the presi- 
dent of the road. 

The statement is wholly unfounded. It might have 
been true if the word c justice ' or ' proprietjr ' had been 



442 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

used, but of reason there is more than enough. The 
railway engineer and the president of the company are 
chosen with a view to the successful management of the 
road. The main object in the election of the President of 
the United States is, and under the present system must 
be, the success of a party which has had for the most part 
no means of success but the use of the offices. No doubt 
only a small part of the people of the United States can 
ever hold office. But with two hundred thousand prizes 
in a lottery, or even one hundred and fifty thousand of 
very small value, and from ten to one hundred aspirants 
for each, the working force in the elections is enormous. 

On the 20th of March, 1896, the three members of the 
Civil Service Commission addressed the Massachusetts 
Reform Club in Boston. It was pointed out that every 
step in the progress of the great reform which has already 
been made in the government administration had come 
from executive action ; that under President Cleveland 
the offices filled by competitive examination had been 
increased to fifty-six thousand, and that there is hope of 
a still further and large extension by an order of the 
President. But throughout these addresses there was not 
one word of commendation for any action by Congress in 
regard to the reform. Except as to the Act establishing 
the commission, which was passed in great haste in 1883 
under pressure of public opinion, Congress has steadily 
resisted the operation of the system in every way it dared. 
It was shown that, while in the last twelve years the 
number of classified offices subject to the commission and 
the appropriations for the same have been actually dimin- 
ished, the offices still open to the spoils system and the 
corresponding appropriations have been largely increased. 

A letter from the Postmaster- General was read, advocat- 
ing an important change in the postal service and requir- 
ing no new appropriation, but only a transfer of a part of 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 443 

that already existing. Yet the head of a great adminis- 
trative department of the government could only address 
this letter to the chairman of a small committee of the 
House, which would talk it over among themselves, and, 
if they decided in favor of it at all, could only do so in 
competition with some fifty other committees, all strug- 
gling together for the attention of the House, itself com- 
pletely indifferent to anything which does not promise to 
promote the success of a party. It never seemed to occur 
to anybody present at the meeting how great would be the 
difference if the Postmaster-General could present his re- 
quest to the House in person and before the whole coun- 
try, with an explanation of details and its bearing upon 
the whole system of the government administration. 

It is not one of the least of President Cleveland's titles 
to public gratitude that in May, 1896, he issued an order 
adding thirty thousand to the number of offices placed 
under the rules of the civil service competition, and leaving 
none but very small offices outside of them. And yet there 
remains the unpleasant fact that, as the offices have been 
for thirty years the only effective means of keeping a party 
majority in Congress together, the withdrawal of this fresh 
instalment makes it only the more certain that the sub- 
stitute for offices will take the form of money, to be 
procured and applied in ways which will be presently 
noticed. 

Those who understood the real basis of the "spoils 
system" predicted that the removal of the offices from 
politics would mean a great increase in the use of money 
for the same purpose, and it will hardly be questioned 
that there has been a great increase of bribery in elections 
in the last twenty years. Of course, the necessary ex- 
penses of a presidential or congressional campaign are 
not insignificant, and the amount of money which can be 
So absorbed, even without direct buying of votes, is very 



444 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

great. But, besides the fact that candidates for office are 
not often rich men, the contribution of large sums by 
candidates themselves would be too dangerous in the face 
of public opinion. There is, however, one source from 
which money for " campaign purposes " can be had in 
almost unlimited amounts, and that is from parties inter- 
ested in the adjustment of protective duties on imports. 
As it has been remarked that the Republican party with- 
out any other apparent reason has become identified with 
a high protective tariff, so it is not altogether fanciful to 
say that civil service reform has been the direct cause of 
imposing that system upon the country to an extent 
beyond all previous experience. 

Early in 1871, Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, chairman of the 
commission for devising reforms in the civil service, was 
requested by President Hayes to investigate personally 
the operation of the reformed system in Great Britain ; 
but it was expressly stated that he must do so at his own 
expense, Congress having made no appropriation for the 
purpose. Mr. Eaton embodied the results of his inquiry 
in a considerable volume, which, deeply interesting in 
itself, is even more so for its demonstration of a conclu- 
sion which the author never sets forth at all, — the differ- 
ence of organization of the two governments. Those who 
are acquainted with Mr. Eaton know well, what indeed 
clearly appears from his book, that he is by no means 
" un-American. " A great part of his life has been spent 
in strenuous and scantily remunerated efforts to promote 
the welfare of his country. A few extracts from his 
book may be taken, therefore, as expressing the evidence 
forced upon him. 

There is nothing more remarkable in the experience of Great 
Britain during the past century than the measures she has taken 
to reform administrative abuses. What we have most neglected in 
politics she has most studied. — the science of administration. She 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 445 

has brought about changes which have elevated the moral tone of her 
official life; reforms which really constitute an era in her history. 
They are as a silver edge upon the dark cloud which hangs over 
British administration in former centuries. While this great work 
has been going on in the mother country we have fallen away from 
the better methods of our early history. The more thoughtful are 
asking whether the abuses which have been so rapidly developed are 
due to our neglect as citizens, or are inevitable under republican 
institutions. Seeing how much better and more quietly administra- 
tion is carried on in Great Britain than in the United States, some 
gloomy and some aristocratic spirits are ready to despair of the 
republic. They attribute the obvious superiority to causes original 
and inevitable in the institutions of their own country. Are the 
reforms of Great Britain based on principles of which only a mon- 
archy can take advantage, or are they equally available under re- 
publican institutions? Can we remove our abuses without changing 
the form of our government ? 1 

It will appear that either in the home government or in India 
substantially all the abuses we have endured and all the specious 
arguments by which their continuance has been excused, were famil- 
iar to English statesmen long before we began to talk about political 
corruption. 2 

There was nothing in the form or the history of the government 
to make such a struggle less severe than it would be with us, but quite 
the contrary. Members of Parliament loved executive power, and 
knew how to use specious arguments to defend its usurpation. There 
was no purer era of public administration in the country before that 
authority was usurped to which reference could be made as a reason 
for its surrender. If it must be conceded that the power of selection 
in the hands of members was a clear usurpation of executive authority, 
it could not be denied that it was acquired at the time when Parlia- 
ment began to stand more bravely for liberty and common rights. 8 

Although from the time of the first reformed Parlia- 
ment the state of the civil service had begun to amend, 
no positive action was taken till 1853. It is curious to 
note that the first step was taken in 1853 in relation to 
India, that far-distant dependency, where by the prece- 
dents of all other governments abuses might be expected 
to increase and culminate. 

1 Eaton's "Civil Service Reform," pp. 4, 5. 
2 Ibid.,i>. lie. 3 Ibid., p. 170. 



446 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The 36th and 37th clauses of the India Act of that year provided 
"that all powers, rights, and privileges of the court of directors of 
the said India Company to nominate or appoint persons to be admitted 
as students . . . shall cease ; and that, subject to such regulations as 
might be made, any person being a natural-born subject of her Majesty 
who might be desirous of presenting himself should be admitted to 
be examined as a candidate." 1 

A forward movement was made about the same time 
at home. 

The administration, with Lord Aberdeen at its head, promptly 
decided to undertake a radical and systematic reform. There was no 
little doubt as to the best plan to pursue. It was at first proposed to 
begin by offering a bill in Parliament, it being thought that nothing 
short of joint action by the legislature and the executive would either 
be at once effective or binding upon succeeding administrations. But 
unanswerable objections arose. Members of Parliament were much 
more likely to acquiesce in reforms proposed by the executive than to 
initiate them by statute. They were not well informed as to existing 
methods or real needs in the executive department, and could never 
devise a good system even if such an undertaking did not too directly 
concern both their future patronage and their favorites in office. 2 

The same idea is officially expressed, and its bearing 
upon the relations of our government according to the 
main idea of this work cannot be too strongly inculcated. 

" It has been too much the habit of the House of Commons to 
interfere in matters for which not they but the executive are respon- 
sible. It is the duty of the executive to provide for the efficient and 
harmonious working of the civil service, and they cannot transfer that 
duty to any other body far less competent to the task than themselves 
without infringing a great and important constitutional principle, 
already too often infringed, to the great detriment of the public 
service." 8 

It was decided that, in the outset, no application should be made 
to Parliament. The reform should be undertaken by the English 
executive (that is, the queen and ministers or administration) for 
the time being. The first step decided upon was an inquiry into the 
exact condition of the public service. Sir Stafford Northcote and 

1 Eaton, op. tit., p. 179. 2 Ibid., p. 185. 

8 " Civil Service Papers," pp. 271, 272, quoted by Eaton, p. 186. 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 447 

Sir Charles Trevelyan were appointed in 1853 to make such inquiry 
and a report. 1 

After various further phases of the reform, — 

On the 4th of July, 1870, the administration through an executive 
order in council and without any action by Parliament gave effect to 
the wishes of the people by abolishing official patronage and favorit- 
ism (and limited competition as an incident), and substituting open 
competition in their place. 2 

The order was, in short, a grand triumph of patriotism, character, 
education, and capacity over selfishness, official favoritism, partisan 
intrigue, and whatever else had been corrupt, immoral, or unjust in 
the action of parties or the bestowal of office. It marked the highest 
elevation of justice and official self-denial that governmental action 
in any country had ever reached, for though examinations and com- 
petitions had been used in a qualified form in France, Germany, 
Sweden, and several other European countries, they were not wholly 
without official dictation, nor were they free to all citizens alike. 
Open competition thus established in Great Britain said in substance 
to every British subject : " The administration confers no favors by 
appointments, the great parties are not allowed to coerce you, the 
high officers are forbidden to use the appointing powers capriciously, 
and subject to the just regulations prescribed each of you is at liberty 
to compete for, and if you are the most worthy you will win, a place 
in the public service of your country, there to remain as long as you 
serve her honorably and efficiently and her interests require you." 8 

It seems very singular that Mr. Eaton did not or would 
not see that the difference between the British and Ameri- 
can systems consists in the different organization of the 
two governments. 

I am unable to find any reason, in the sentiment of our people or 
the nature of our government, why the members of the American 

* Eaton, op. cit., p. 189. 2 Ibid., p. 228. 

s Ibid., p. 231. It may be said that Mr. Cleveland's order of May, 
1896, corresponds to the English order here referred to. But the English 
order once passed has never been questioned or interfered with in or out 
of Parliament ; and the exclusive power of initiative in public affairs held 
by the English executive makes it certain that it never will be. In the 
United States it has taken twenty-five years to work out the reform in 
the face of sullen and ill-concealed hostility on the part of Congress ; and 
there can never be any certainty that by failure of appropriation or some 
intrigue, the legislature may not fatally undermine the whole system. 



448 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Congress, any more than the members of the British Parliament, need 
patronage and spoils, or can justify the use of them to bring about 
their election, to inspire their patriotism, or to reward their fidelity. 1 

The reason which he is unable to find is simply this. 
In the one case, that of Great Britain, there is a ministry 
who, while in office, act as the agents of the whole country 
and are responsible for the conduct of government. The 
ministers not only have seats in the House of Commons, 
but have the initiative and guidance of legislation. And 
just because they represent the whole country and the 
administration, which no other man or number of men in 
the House do, the whole initiative is left to them, the 
House retaining for itself only a veto upon the proposals 
of the ministers. If an executive order is issued, throwing 
open the civil service to competitive examination, all that 
is needed to carry it into effect is a sum of money. The 
ministers can put a sufficient item into the appropriation 
bill, and the House cannot throw it out without risking a 
change of ministry or an appeal to the country, in which 
the party majority would be by no means certain of the 
popular approval. 

But while the ministers are clothed with these great 
powers they are, on the other hand, held to the sharpest 
responsibility to public opinion, which may be brought to 
bear not merely by a vote of a party majority but by the 
direct attack of the leader of opposition and a few indi- 
vidual members. 

There have been striking examples of the power of that opinion to 
bring ministers and cabinets to obedience, in which members of Par- 
liament, once so hostile, appear to have made haste to speak for the 
new and popular system. When, for example, a few years since Mr. 
Layard was thought to have been appointed minister to Spain in viola- 
tion of the civil service system, the Cabinet was speedily forced to 
vindicate the regularity of its action before Parliament. In the late 
promotion of Mr. Pigott to a very subordinate place, Lord Beacons- 

1 Eaton, op. cit., p. 382. 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 449 

field was believed to have departed from the spirit of the civil service 
rules. So vigorous was the protest, so fierce was the assault of the 
press, so many of his own party refused to sustain him, that his ad- 
ministration suffered its first defeat. A vote of censure was carried 
against him upon the question raised, in a House in which his party 
had a majority of from sixty to a hundred votes. So intense was the 
feeling that " the House of Commons was deserted and the members 
flocked to hear what their former colleague could say in the House of 
Lords." It was only by a frank and elaborate speech in self-vindica- 
tion, showing that the charge was unwarranted, that the prime 
minister saved himself from the necessity of resignation. 1 

The severity of this process — which depends wholly 
upon an organized and vigilant opposition, acting directly 
upon the ministers through individual attack — is such as 
to far outweigh and completely silence any private solici- 
tations from persons either in or out of Parliament. With 
these exceptions the question of the civil service has hardly 
been raised at all for a quarter of a century. The system 
of competitive examination is firmly established, and the 
country is never called upon to undergo any agitation 
upon the subject. 

In the other case, that of the United States, there are 
two bodies, one of 356 and the other of 90 men, all 
equal among themselves and no one of them having any 
claim to represent the whole country or to be in any 
degree responsible for the conduct of the government. 
Any measure which gets past these two houses must do 
so on the ground of party policy with which each mem- 
ber feels his interest to be bound up , and the members 
know full well that they owe their seats much more to 
energetic and interested workers in their districts than 
to the voters at large, who have nothing to do with nomi- 
nations and only a choice between the party candidates 
at elections. Meantime the executive officials who do 
represent the whole country and are charged with the 
conduct of government, are wholly excluded from any 

i Ibid., p. 374, 
2g 



450 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

voice in legislation, having even less power in this re- 
spect than any member of either house. The President 
himself is just as badly off, having power only, and lim- 
ited at that, to say what the houses shall not do. If an 
executive order is given for competitive examination it is 
liable to be defeated by the mere omission of any appro- 
priation for it. It must be remembered, again, that the 
party use of offices is really the only means of influence 
with Congress which the President possesses, and it may 
well be argued that the indifference of both houses to 
executive wishes and requests has considerably increased 
with the measure of civil service reform already obtained. 
Moreover, whatever abuses in respect to offices the Presi- 
dent and Cabinet may commit they can only be reached 
through an investigating committee, whose reports, made 
after a considerable interval of time and based as every- 
body knows upon purely party considerations, have very 
little weight. The penalty for yielding to the solicita- 
tions of office-seekers is therefore not sufficient to secure 
the rejection of them. 

It may be said that after all our Congress did pass a 
Civil Service Reform Act and that by successive acts of 
the executive nearly all the offices have been brought 
under the competitive system as much as in Great Brit- 
ain. As to the first it may be remarked that the direct 
action of public opinion is probably greater than in Great 
Britain. What it needs to become an effective and per- 
manent force is an official guide and instrument in the 
executive, watched and checked by an organized opposi- 
tion under a leader. The first Reform Act was intended 
as a mere sop to public opinion which Congress has ever 
since sought to neutralize and defeat. Executive action, 
which has mainly proceeded from Mr. Cleveland, increased 
the breach between the two brandies of the government 
and helped to destroy his influence with his own party. So 



xix GOVEKNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 461 

far from Congress undertaking to enforce the rules, execu- 
tive violation of them would be overlooked and condoned, 
and there is no security that the whole system may not be 
swept away either by silent evasion or direct act of Con- 
gress. Moreover, in Great Britain it has not been found 
necessary to provide a substitute for the use of offices in 
elections by the direct bribery of campaign funds. 

Whether it is practicable or desirable to make changes 
in our governmental methods to correspond with those 
of Great Britain will be discussed later, but there is no 
escape from the conclusion that in the difference of 
methods lies the real cause of the difference of results. 
We have either to accept this or to admit that our people 
is inferior to that of Great Britain both in ability and 
intention. Which alternative is the most patriotic and 
"American"? 

One more quotation from Mr. Eaton, though with a 
different object from what he aimed at. 

It is worthy of our notice that the question now presented is not 
so much a question about adopting processes and methods as it is 
about approving certain great principles which embody a theory of 
political morality, of official obligation, of equal rights and common 
justice in government. It was the principle, rather than the mere 
methods, of the division of government into three great departments, 
of the independence of the judiciary, of free parliamentary debate, of 
representative institutions, of trial by jury, of the habeas corpus, of the 
common law, of personal rights, of the subordination of the military 
to the civil power, which we adopted from Great Britain in our origi- 
nal constitution. The question now before us is, whether the nation, 
which has maintained as faithfully as we have all these great founda- 
tions of liberty still equally fundamental in the two countries, may not 
now be able to tender us other principles worthy of our adoption, which 
she has adopted in perfecting the vast and complicated operations in 
her civil affairs during the period in which — absorbed by the inter- 
ests of new States and Territories and by the many matters peculiar to 
a young nation — we have given little thought to the practical work- 
ing of government. 1 

1 Eaton, op. cit., p. 362. 



452 THE LESSON OE POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The principle which now presents itself is the read- 
justment of power and responsibility in the executive as 
against the usurpations of the legislature. 

After this comparison of two governmental systems, 
the reader is invited to turn back to Chapter XIV. and 
note what the civil service has become in France under 
the Third Republic, to observe how complete has been the 
subjection of the executive to the despotism of the legis- 
lature and its consequent effect upon the civil service, and 
to judge whether the reasoning in this chapter is not con- 
firmed and justified by this third example of the effect of 
organization in government. 

A different chain of events leads to the same conclusion 
in the conflict with slavery. The Federal Constitution had 
evaded the whole subject, and the cessation of the slave 
trade had caused a hope that it might settle itself. But 
the invention of the cotton gin had given a fresh impulse 
to slave labor, and in the third decade of this century it 
became evident that an irreconcilable contest was arising 
between the free and the slave States, in which one or the 
other must succumb. For the Southern people it could 
not be denied that it was no fault of theirs. They had 
inherited the evil, which was far greater to them than to 
anybody else, from their ancestors, and the Union had been 
entered upon by all the States with a full knowledge of its 
existence. Their whole property and means of existence 
were bound up with it, and, if the rest of the Union asked 
them to give it up, they were entitled to a reasonable com- 
pensation so that the whole sacrifice should not fall upon 
them. The business portion of the North would gladly 
have entered into any compromise of this kind, but there 
was nobody to take the lead in it. Men like William 
Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips employed language 
towards the South which was suited only to thieves and 
murderers, and the awakening attention of the North was 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 463 

fed only on ringing denunciations which went far to make 
a peaceful settlement impossible. Of course, the hot- 
blooded people of the South, who would have to bear all 
the loss if slavery were abolished, met these attacks with 
the fiercest resentment. It was hardly safe for a Massa- 
chusetts man to travel in the South, and it became a matter 
of honor to demand the arrest and return of miserable fugi- 
tive slaves by United States troops, which in turn raised 
the exasperation at the North to a white heat. 

The natural and only possible mediator between the 
two sections was the federal government. What was its 
equipment for this function ? Again we find two bodies 
of men composed each of equal units without leadership 
and without discipline, every member of both representing 
only a fraction of the country, with no inducement or 
authority to speak or act for the whole, and with nobody 
to take part in their debates who was in any way respon- 
sible for the conduct of government. It was a pure ques- 
tion of majority and minority made up by log-rolling and 
intrigue, with no cement but the party names then pre- 
vailing of Whigs and Democrats. In this work the 
Southerners had decidedly the advantage, their affairs 
being in the hands of a limited aristocracy, wealthy in 
slaves and land and acting in concert as to the main prin- 
ciple ; while the North, though already far richer, was 
hampered in the choice of its representatives by the 
considerations already noted. 

Over against this body stood an executive, powerless 
as has been shown, except in the distribution of offices, 
elected purely as an instrument of party, and completely 
subservient to the party majority in Congress. Men like 
Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan were like corks upon the sur- 
face of the waters. Northern members of Congress, with- 
out defined purpose and with no leader to rally around, 
fell an easy prey to their determined Southern opponents, 



454 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

at least till the newly formed Republican party began to 
utter its thunder tones, while measures like the admission 
of new slave States and the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise marked the progress to the final catastrophe. 

There is, perhaps, no item of sadder significance than 
the close of the career of Daniel Webster. While he had 
but little sympathy with the violence of the early aboli- 
tionists, he perceived as a statesman the whole danger 
involved in slavery, and took sides against it. When the 
annexation of Texas was impending in 1843-1845 he was 
not in public life, but, with a full sense of the conse- 
quences, he exerted himself to arouse public opinion in 
New England to oppose it. But as the march of events 
went on, and his clear vision saw the conflict which was 
coming, and as he believed — for even he could not foresee 
the splendid result which was to follow — that it meant 
the dissolution of the Union to the glorification of which 
his life had been devoted, his resolution gave way. His 
famous speech of March 7, 1850, brought down upon him 
a howl of denunciation from the Northern enthusiasts, and 
only served to hasten the crisis which he was so anxious to 
avert. Thenceforward the signs of the times were in 
speeches like Charles Sumner's in the Senate upon the 
" Crime against Kansas," and the response in the assault 
upon him in the senate-chamber by Brooks of South Caro- 
lina ; in events like John Brown's invasion of Virginia and 
the struggle for supremacy in Kansas ; but nowhere on the 
horizon was to be seen anything like a statesmanlike at- 
tempt at conciliation or peaceful solution of the problem. 
The secrecy of the committee system and the absence of 
personal responsibility concealed from public view the 
preparations which were making on the part of the South, 
including the transfer of arms and munitions from North- 
ern arsenals, and after the election of Lincoln the firing 
upon Fort Sumter burst upon a North equally astonished 
and unprepared. 



xix GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 455 

It may seem to be a forced comparison between the 
anti-slavery conflict in the United States and the first 
parliamentary reform in Great Britain, but the parallel is 
quite sufficient to furnish an illustration. In the one case 
the division line was sectional or, so to speak, perpendicu- 
lar, and in the other social or horizontal, the last being by 
no means the easiest to deal with, as the United States 
may yet have occasion to learn. Up to the time of Lin- 
coln's election the action of the North was almost wholly 
emotional or based upon an idea, its material prosperity 
having been very little affected, certainly not to the extent 
of making it a ground for civil war. The South again 
had really been very little interfered with. They had 
won in every political contest and their domestic affairs 
had not been touched at all. They flew to arms to arrest 
disaster which was wholly prospective, and because they 
had been excited by insult and abuse. In Great Britain, 
on the other hand, the material suffering since the close 
of the Napoleonic wars had been very great. The fall in 
the prices of grain had filled the landowners with dismay. 
The invention of machinery, the cessation of government 
expenditure, and the return to specie payments had caused 
widespread distress among the poor, who felt the pain with- 
out understanding the cause. The Manchester massacre 2 
had furnished for both sides the taste of blood, while arm- 
ing was going on all through the country. And just at 
the height of the struggle came the French Revolution of 
July, 1830, shaking thrones throughout Europe, and fur- 
nishing a stimulus to agitators and a spectre of dread to 
those who had most to lose. The remedy looked to in 
this crisis was a complex reorganization of the House 
of Commons by a redistribution of seats. Suppose that 
the contest had been carried on through the country by 
violent denunciation between the poor and the rich ; that 
1 See Chap. VI. 



46G THE LESSON OF POTULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

in a House of over six hundred members every one had 
been at liberty to propose and insist upon a scheme of his 
own without any mediating authority to reconcile them ; 
that different parts of these schemes had been referred 
to committees appointed by the Speaker and struggling 
in private under immense pressure of intrigue and wire- 
pulling, while, as year after year of delay and impotence 
passed by, the fire of mutual exasperation was burning 
hotter and hotter. Could there have been any other out- 
come than civil war? And though the upper classes 
might have put down resistance by military force, it 
would have left Great Britain in the condition in which 
Italy, France, and Germany passed the next thirty years, 
with a bitterness of class hatred nursing the seed of 
future revolutions. 1 

Suppose, on the other hand, that in the United States, 
from the beginning of the century, a cabinet representing 
the whole country had regularly held a place in Congress 
and had been looked up to habitually by the country as 
the guide and arbiter in disputed questions ; that when 
the first excitement showed itself in the North, the con- 
servative classes had joined together to deprecate vio- 
lence, to urge leaving the disposition of the subject to 
the national government, and to assure the South of their 
anxiety to arrive at a fair and just settlement. The agi- 
tation would then have taken the form of electing a Presi- 
dent who, with his Cabinet, would consider what was to 
be done, a question not of quarrelling but of votes. 

An executive thus constituted would have been assailed 
by both sides with eager appeals for a favorable decision. 
With the full discussion and evidence before the country 
and a deep sense of the gravity of the situation, that execu- 
tive would have prepared a measure which we may assume 
for the purpose of illustration : " As it is evident that the 

1 Compare Chap. VI. as to the actual course of events. 



xxx GOVERNMENT BY LEGISLATURE 457 

North with its increasing wealth and population will not 
long tolerate a union with slavery, and as the South can- 
not be expected to sacrifice an institution which is the 
basis of its material prosperity without full compensation, 
it is proposed to pay the sum of one (or two) hundred 
dollars for every man, woman, and child now held in 
slavery, the adjustment of valuation of age and sex to be 
made by each State government \ its proportion of money 
to be handed over to each State government in instal- 
ments after five years from January 1 next, provided such 
State government shall by that time have declared the 
emancipation of the slaves and the extinction of slavery 
within its borders ; and for that purpose there will be 
issued four (or eight) hundred millions of government 
bonds in such instalments as may be requisite." 

Of course the scheme would have been met on both 
sides with fierce and contemptuous refusal. But for both 
sides to denounce a proposition is a different thing from 
denouncing each other. After the first explosion, argu- 
ments would begin to be weighed. The executive, while 
adhering to the main point, would postpone a decision. 
Speakers would be sent out, whom the South would not 
shoot for asking them to sell their property at a high 
price, nor the North hoot to silence for asking the people 
to put their hands in their pockets to get rid of an evil for 
which the whole nation was responsible. Impracticable 
as the plan may appear to those who remember or know 
the history as it was, it would certainly not have been 
more difficult of accomplishment than was the measure 
of parliamentary reform successfully carried through in 
Great Britain 

If in the end some such scheme had succeeded, not 
only would it have offered infinite advantage over the 
arbitrament of civil war, but it would have made certain 
that no domestic discussion could ever after arise in this 



458 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, xix 

country which would not be settled by peaceful means ; 
while if all such attempts had failed, the North, instead of 
having all the nations of Europe against it when the 
struggle finally came, would have commanded the sym- 
pathy of the civilized world. As it was, great as was the 
result achieved, there remained the fatal precedent that 
armed force is the natural and only available means of 
solution of political difficulties, a lesson which unless 
averted by reforms in our methods of government can 
hardly fail to bear evil fruit at no very distant day. Its 
prospective effect upon the treatment of foreign affairs is 
hardly less manifest. 



CHAPTER XX 

PUBLIC FINANCE 

r^\ O VERNMENT, like most human affairs, resolves itself 
^^ in the end into questions of finance. Probably few per- 
sons reflect how closely the life of the individual is bound 
up with money ; that from the time an infant is born into 
the world till the man is left in his grave there is not an 
action or an event, and hardly even a thought, in his exist- 
ence which does not involve the intervention of money. 
In the subdivision into small sums and the aggregation 
into large it is almost as plastic as the atmosphere and as 
essential to the continuance of human life. It may seem 
like modern materialism to say that there is upon the 
whole no element so essential to happiness, but the edge 
of the remark is taken off if we add that this does not 
depend upon the quantity but the management of money. 
The day laborer who through life succeeds in maintaining 
a surplus, however small, of income over expenditure, and 
can see his way to support, even on the smallest scale, in 
his old age, is a more independent and a happier man than 
the millionnaire who finds his income inadequate to the 
indulgences which he regards as necessaries. 

The national housekeeping is but the aggregate of 
the individual. If it is well and carefully conducted it 
furnishes the strongest of examples to the whole nation. 
Taxes are paid cheerfully if they are felt to be economi- 
cally and judiciously expended, and if they are seen to be 
equitably and considerately imposed. Disordered finances, 
on the other hand, are both a symptom and a cause of 

459 



4G0 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chak 

moral disorder in a people. The civil war, which broke 
out in England under Charles I., turned upon ship- 
money, or the right of the Crown to lay taxes without the 
consent of Parliament, which was the concrete expression 
of a great variety of grievances. The immediate cause of 
the first French Revolution was public bankruptcy, even 
while the resources of the nation were amply sufficient to 
meet all obligations, and this again was only the summing 
up of infinite abuses of all kinds which had grown up in 
the lapse of centuries. The revolt of the American colonies 
from Great Britain was based ostensibly almost entirely 
upon questions of taxation, and though our Civil War 
arose upon slavery as a cause, finance very quickly as- 
serted itself as the main element in its conclusion. 

It has already been argued 1 that the British national 
finance is the first in the world, not because Parliament 
is composed of any better material than our Congress, still 
less because the population of Great Britain is any better 
than that of the United States, but because the whole ini- 
tiative and control of financial legislation is in the hands 
of the chancellor of the exchequer, subject only to a veto 
by Parliament. We have now to examine the effect upon 
public finance of conditions exactly reversed, when the 
initiative of financial legislation is in the hands of two 
bodies of men respectively of 356 and 90 equal members, 
any one of whom can introduce any proposition he pleases ; 
while the duty of evolving some order out of this chaos is 
intrusted to one committee of the House on Ways and 
Means, and a number on Appropriations, and one in the 
Senate on Finance, all made up of local representatives 
not at all responsible for administration, all working in 
secret with perfect security against any effective public 
debate, and among whom there is but one common motive 
force, — the success or the defeat of a party; to which must 

i Chap. VI. 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 461 

be added that the official head of the finances has no voice 
in the matter whatever, while even the President has 
only a negative on whatever schemes Congress may 
work out. 1 

As this work does not profess to be historical we may 
begin with the close of the Civil War. And there is the 
more reason for this as finance, like the rest of the gov- 
ernment, was during the war practically under a despot- 
ism, Congress doing obediently almost everything which 
Mr. Chase required ; and again as criticism of any manage- 
ment in such a crisis would not be fair especially in view 
of the conditions which existed when it broke out. 

The maximum of the public debt as given in the reports 
of the Secretary of the Treasury for the end of each fiscal 
year was : — 

On the 1st of July, 1866 ...... $2,773,236,193 

On the 1st of July, 1893 2 1,545,985,686 

Decrease in twenty-seven years $1,227,250,507 

In other words, besides interest on the debt, forty-five and 
a half millions of dollars had been raised annually on the 
average by taxation of the people towards payment of the 
principal. It is one thing to maintain the fallacy that " a 
national debt is a national blessing " and quite another to 
say that when once a debt has been contracted it is not 
wise to be in too great a hurry to pay it off. When the 
English first achieved a surplus in their annual balance 
soon after 1840 by means of the income tax, their declared 
policy, which has ever since been adhered to, was to relieve 

1 Compare what is said in Chap. XVII. as to the distribution of appro- 
priations among several committees. The recklessness of expenditure, 
regardless of revenue, and the impending increase of public debt, are likely 
before many years to furnish some startling illustrations of the results of 
trusting the public finances to an uncontrolled legislature. Compare also 
Chap. XV. as to finance in the French Chambers. 

2 The last year in which there was any surplus of revenue. 



402 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

taxation rather than to pay off debt, on the ground that 
money in the pockets of the people was worth more to 
them than the interest on the national debt. The wisdom 
of this course is further shown by the fact which might 
easily be established that under the changed conditions of 
the monetary system the nation has gained by postponing 
payment of the debt at least an equivalent amount ; in 
other words, that the Treasury could to-day more easily 
pay a debt of twice the amount than it could have paid 
the present debt in the years from 1820 to 1850. 

The average interest on our public debt up to 1880 was 
certainly not more than six per cent., and the commercial 
rates of interest prevailing up to that time show that the 
people could well have afforded to keep the money in- 
stead of paying it out for taxes, and this would be much 
more strongly true if the interval had been made use of 
to restore the currency to a sound condition. After that 
time the bonds were purchased by the government in 
open market at premiums so large as at one time to save 
not more than one and a half per cent, interest for the 
unexpired period. There can be no question that money 
was worth much more than that to the people. 1 

But the figures given above do not tell the whole story. 

From the debt on the 1st of July, 1866 . . . $2,773,236,193 
Deduct cash in the Treasury 137,200,007 

Leaving net debt $2,636,036,186 

From the debt on the 1st of July, 1893 . . . $1,545,985,686 
Deduct cash in the Treasury 707,016,210 a 

Leaving net debt $838,969,476 

Difference 1866 to 1893 $1,797,066,700 

1 See report of the Secretary of the Treasury for December, 1888, with 
an earnest protest against such waste of the people's money. 

2 Consisting of gold, silver, and the various kinds of paper. 



PUBLIC FINANCE 



463 



Making the annual average sixty -five and three-quarters 
millions received from the people towards paying the prin- 
cipal of the debt. 

It has been said that the introduction of civil service 
reform pointed to the use of money in politics and that 
it was partly in consequence of this, though the change 
had begun some time before, that the Republican party, 
which had held control of the government for so many 
years, became naturally identified with high protective 
duties. Some interesting results of the situation will 
appear from the following table, giving the surplus of the 
government revenue above ordinary expenditure, includ- 
ing interest on the public debt but exclusive of bonds 
purchased for the sinking fund : — 



Tear ending June 30. 


Teae ending June 30. 


Tear ending June 30. 


1875 


$13,376,658 


1883 


$132,879,444 


1891 


$37,239,762 


1876 


29,022,241 


1884 


104,393,625 


1892 


9,914,453 


1877 


30,340,557 


1885 


63,463,771 


1893 


2,341,674 


1878 


20,799,550 


1886 


93,956,588 


1894 


1 69,803,304 


1879 


6,879,300 


1887 


103,471,197 


1895 


1 42,805,223 


1880 


65,883,653 


1888 


119,612,116 


1896 


1 25,203,245 


1881 


100,069,405 


1889 


105,053,443 


1897 


118,052,455 


1882 


145,543,810 


1890 


105,344,396 


1898 


138,047,247 



If we consider that the interest on the public debt 
never at its highest point exceeded one hundred and fifty- 
one millions, and at its lowest point in 1893 stood at 
twenty -three millions, it appears how great a burden has 
been imposed upon the country, not for the purpose of 
paying off the principal of the debt, though that was the 
effect, but for the sake of maintaining the high protective 
duties upon which the pecuniary resources of the domi- 

i Deficit. 



464 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

nant party were dependent. 1 But a new danger pre- 
sented itself. The debt was rapidly approaching extinc- 
tion. The national banks were beginning to be alarmed 
lest if all the government bonds were paid off the basis of 
their currency issues might be wanting. Moreover, as the 
surplus revenue constantly drew into the Treasury the 
notes and gold which formed the reserves of the banks, 
a practical contraction of the currency and consequent 
stringency of money could only be avoided by releasing 
the accumulation in the Treasury through the purchase 
of bonds at however high prices, and this could obviously 
be continued only while there were bonds to be purchased. 
Something must be done, but the natural and obvious 
resource of reducing the tariff till the revenue was cut 
down to the expenditure by no means suited the views of 
the party in power. 

There was, however, an expedient which seemed to 
answer all requirements except the trifling one of the 
public welfare. There was a half -million more or less of 
persons who of themselves or by their relatives had taken 
part in the Civil War. If each one of them could be 
provided with a pension, to include arrears from the 
close of the war, the surplus revenue would be disposed 
of for a long time to come. More than this, a permanent 
stock of gratitude would be provided for the party dis- 
tributing such beneficence, and particularly furnish a 
claim to the support of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
a body which has shown signs of an ambition to add the 
victories of politics to those of war. This policy had 
also the advantage of offering effective instruments for 
the work in the shape of pension agents, keenly alive to 

1 Lest this should be interpreted in a partisan spirit it may be said that 
the Republicans are referred to only because they have so long held con- 
trol of the government. The Democratic party would certainly have 
done no better. The real difficulty is in the organization and working of 
Congress as a whole. 



PUBLIC FINANCE 



465 



the chance of a handsome commission. So every village 
in the country, that is to say in the northern part, was 
deluged with inquiries whether any and how many per- 
sons there were who could furbish up a war record as the 
basis of a claim upon a paternal treasury. Every person 
who had scratched his finger, or had his digestion impaired 
by the imperfect cooking of a military camp, found ardent 
sympathizers to work up his case and present it to a rep- 
resentative body more than willing to give it favorable 
consideration. Another table for twenty years, parallel 
to that given above, will show the effectiveness of this 
device in promoting its original purpose of disposing of 
the surplus. 

Amounts of the Pension List for the Years ending 
June 30 



1875 


$29,534,000 


1883 


$66,012,573 


1891 


$124,415,951 


1876 


28,297,395 


1884 


55,429,228 


1892 


134,583,052 


1877 


27,963,752 


1885 


56,102,267 


1893 


159,357,557 


1878 


27,137,019 


1886 


63,404,864 


1894 


141,177,285 


1879 


35,121,482 


1887 


75,029,101 


1895 


141,395,229 


1880 


56,777,174 


1888 


80,288,508 


1896 


139,434,000 


1881 


50,059,279 


1889 


87,624,779 


1897 


141,053,164 


1882 


61,345,193 


1890 


106,936,855 


1898 


147,452,368 



It thus appears that in the last twenty-four years, besides 
paying off so much principal of the public debt, we have 
raised over two thousand millions of dollars to be distrib- 
uted among less than a million of persons at the expense of 
the other sixty-nine millions. It seems like the irony of 
fate that while not one dollar of this golden shower de- 
scended upon the seceding States they have had to pay 
their full share of the taxes by which it was maintained. 
Although no war indemnity was formally imposed upon 
the South, it has in no wise escaped the payment of one : 
2 ii 



466 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

a striking commentary upon the spirit of justice and 
magnanimity in the government as compared with that of 
the people. It must be admitted that many Southern 
members have voted for the system of pensions, probably, 
so far as party reasons and consequent personal advantage 
do not enter in, with the idea of showing that they 
loyally accepted their fate. 

A financial system in which expenditure is arranged by 
one set of men and revenue by another set, the two acting 
quite independent of and with very little reference to 
each other, is not likely to insure very accurate estimates 
in advance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the esti- 
mate of the Secretary of the Treasury as late as the preced- 
ing December in each year should have compared with the 
facts as follows : — 

Fiscal year ending June 30, 1894: — 

Kevenue. Expenditure. Deficit. 

Estimate $430,121,365 $458,121,365 $28,000,000 

Actual 372,802,495 442,605,799 69,803,304 

Year ending June 30, 1895: — 

Estimate $424,427,748 $444,427,748 $20,000,000 

Actual 390,373,203 433,178,426 42,805,223 

Year ending June 30, 1896 : — 

Estimate $431,907,407 $448,907,407 $17,000,000 

Actual 409,475,408 434,678,654 25,203,245 

Year ending June 30, 1897: — 

Estimate ..... $407,793,120 $472,293,120 $64,500,000 
Actual 430,387,167 448,439,622 18,052,455 

Nor was it any more out of the way that the budget, which 
on June 30, 1893, showed a surplus for the year though 
greatly diminished still amounting to two millions, should 
give on June 30, 1894, a deficit for the year of sixty-nine 
millions. 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 467 

It had been evident that this result was coming, and the 
Secretary, in his annual report, had urged upon Congress 
to authorize the borrowing of money in convenient forms. 
Why Congress refused to do so will appear when we come 
to the subject of currency, but it did refuse, and the Presi- 
dent was obliged to go back twenty years to the Act of 
January 14, 1875, which authorized the issue of bonds for 
the purpose of redeeming the government currency, though 
it neither enjoined this nor made any suitable provision 
for it. The form of the bond went back still five years 
further, and, bearing four to five per cent, interest, could 
only meet modern requirements by being sold at a pre- 
mium so large as to interfere seriously with its acceptance 
in the market. Moreover, these bonds were payable in 
" coin," and, as there was arising a fear that the govern- 
ment might not only pay its notes but its bonds in silver 
coin, this form of bond was especially objectionable. The 
President had no choice, however, but, of his own motion 
and without any authority from Congress, to take the pro- 
tection of the Treasury into his own hands. It is significant 
that the loan advertised November 13, 1894, when Con- 
gress was not in session, brought a much better price than 
the two which came after when Congress was at hand to 
exercise its baneful influence. Fifty millions were offered 
of fi.ve per cent, bonds having ten years to run. One bid 
for the whole amount was accepted of 117.077 per cent., 
which made the rate of interest to the buyer equal to 
2.878 per cent, per annum for the ten years. 

The relief was, however, but temporary. The gold 
reserve of the Treasury, which is the reliance for the pro- 
tection of the government notes, again declined. The 
House of Representatives, on the 7th of February, 1895, 
refused, by a vote of 162 to 135, to pass an Act to issue 
bonds payable in gold, and on the 8th President Cleve- 
land, again of his own motion and without explicit author- 



468 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

ity from Congress, made a contract with a private firm 
for sixty -two millions of four per cent, thirty -year bonds at 
a price which would pay three and three-quarters per cent, 
interest. The President at once sent a message to Con- 
gress stating that he had made this bargain, certainly 
unfavorable on its face, but that he had secured an option 
for ten days of substituting a three per cent, bond at par 
if Congress would pass a resolve making it definitely pay- 
able in gold, and that the saving to the country in that 
way would be over sixteen millions during the life of the 
loan. That body, however, being much more ready to 
resent executive independence than to exercise any care of 
the public finances, limited itself to abuse of the President, 
and allowed the option to pass by. 

A year had hardly elapsed when the gold reserve of the 
Treasury again called for aid. Congress was again in 
session, and still neglected to make suitable provision for 
the wants of the Treasury. The House characteristically 
maintained that what was wanted was revenue and not 
gold, and, for obvious reasons, proposed a horizontal addi- 
tion of fifteen per cent, to the tariff. The Senate would 
have nothing to do with either a bond or a tariff bill, but 
resolved, as a timely expedient, in favor of the free coin- 
age of silver at a 16 to 1 ratio, which the House, in 
its turn, refused to adopt. The President, therefore, re- 
curred once more to the Act of 1875. As fault had been 
found with the private contract, notwithstanding that it 
carried a very favorable option which Congress refused to 
adopt, public bids were invited on the 5th of February, 
1896, for one hundred millions of the thirty-year four per 
cent, bonds. The offers amounted to nearly five hundred 
millions, and the bonds were taken at a price equal to three 
and three-eighths per cent, interest, and rapidly advanced 
to a point which made the interest three and one-eighth per 
cent, per annum. There was a widespread expression of 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 469 

satisfaction that holders of capital had still confidence in 
the good faith of the government, notwithstanding the 
efforts of Congress to destroy it. 

Thus, within less than eighteen months, and in a time 
of peace, we had added two hundred millions to the 
funded debt, partly to replace bonds which had been 
anticipated at one and one-half per cent, interest for the 
sake of getting rid of a surplus of revenue caused by 
excessive taxation in the interest of a party. 1 It cannot 
be said that in this history there was any considerable 
amount of personal corruption. It was mainly the man- 
agement of a disorganized body, with no motive or 
coherent force except party, and with that party force by 
the terms of its existence based upon private interest. 
Still less can this mismanagement be charged to universal 
suffrage, since the people cannot provide organization, and 
in the selection of men have done their best in guarding 
against open and personal bribery. The wonder is not 
that there is so much corruption, but that there is so 
little. 

The shortcomings as to the public debt are, however, 
trifling as compared with those in the currency. If we take 
into account the universality of money as an instrument 
of exchange which has already been alluded to, it may 
well be said that there is no subject with which govern- 
ment has to do more important to the welfare of a 

1 The door once opened was not to be again closed. On the 13th of 
June, 1898, public subscriptions were invited for two hundred millions of 
three per cent, ten-fifty year bonds payable interest and principal in 
coin. The aggregate bids amounted to over fifteen hundred millions. 
The effect of such a display of apparent wealth upon the appropriating 
committees of Congress may be imagined. Shortly after the Prussian 
War a public loan was invited in Prance for a part of the two milliards of 
indemnity exacted by Germany. The London Punch gave a picture of 
Prince Bismarck reading the total of subscriptions, paralyzed with 
astonishment, and exclaiming — " Twenty milliards ! ! ! And they say I 
robbed them." 



470 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

people. Short of war there is no agency which can 
produce such widespread disaster and suffering as a bad 
currency, for though it does not act mainly like war by 
the destruction of property, yet by the fluctuation and 
uncertainty of individual fortunes it produces almost as 
great evils. The words of Sir Robert Peel in the debate 
on the currency in the House of Commons on May 8, 
1844, are worth quoting. 

There is no contract, public or private, no engagement, national or 
individual, which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of commerce, 
the profits of trade, the arrangements to be made in all the domestic 
affairs of society, the wages of labor, the transactions of the highest 
amount and of the lowest, the payment of the national debt, the 
provisions of the national expenditure on the one hand, and the com- 
mand which coin of the smallest denomination has over the neces- 
saries of life on the other, are all affected by the decision which we 
may come to on this great question. When we look at the fluctua- 
tions which have taken place in our currency, defeating all the 
calculations on which commercial enterprise could rest, our gratifica- 
tion will be of the highest and purest kind if we prevail on the House 
to adopt a measure that will give steadiness to the character of our 
resources, which will inspire confidence in the circulating medium, 
which will diminish all inducements to fraudulent speculations and 
gamblings, and insure its just reward to commercial enterprise con- 
ducted with honesty and secured by patience. 1 

It may be interesting to examine what has been the 
relative success of the British government and our own 
in dealing with such a question; and in discussing gov- 
ernment action upon this important subject it will be 
necessary to consider first the theory which underlies it. 
Though the theory here stated may be fiercely disputed 
by many authorities, it will serve at least for the purpose 
of illustration. Supposing for a moment that all money 
was of gold, how is it distributed among the various 
countries of the world ? If any country has rich gold 

1 Words which speak volumes in their application to the subsequent 
history of Great Britain and of the United States of fifty years later. 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 471 

mines, as for instance California in 1849, it wants every- 
thing else, and prices are high in gold. Goods flow 
thither from all quarters and gold is taken away till, just 
as water seeks its level, an equilibrium of prices is estab- 
lished. This may be modified by distance, cost of trans- 
portation, mistaken speculation, etc., but such is the 
general result. 

Next suppose that one country makes use of paper 
money redeemable in gold, whether issued by the govern- 
ment or banks. The effect is the same as if so much gold 
was discovered — prices rise, imports increase, exports 
decrease, and the excess of money flows off in the form 
of gold, until the residue of gold and paper combined, 
though with a smaller proportion of gold, has reached the 
monetary level of the world. Each of many countries 
may have its own paper money, the whole forming so 
many lakes or reservoirs, connected together by the com- 
mon ocean of gold. If any one country exceeds its due 
proportion, though it may be concealed for a time by 
borrowing abroad or similar expedients, yet the result 
must sooner or later be a suspension of specie payments 
with a premium on gold, or in other words a discount on the 
paper. Of course this may be averted by a reduction of 
the quantity of paper, which will in its turn reduce prices 
and stop export or cause an import of gold ; but if this is 
done suddenly and under the impulse of panic it may go 
farther than is necessary, and disturb values and prices 
in a way to cause bankruptcy and disaster. This effect 
is greatly increased by the use of what may be called 
credit money as distinct from paper money, that is, what 
is known by the name of bank deposits. For example, A 
presents a note of 15000 at his bank for discount, and 
the bank, as we may for the present purpose disregard 
the interest, gives him a pass-book with 15000 written in 
it. This constitutes the bank's promise to pay just as 



472 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

much as if it were so many bank notes. A gives a check 
to B, and the amount is transferred on the bank's books to 
B's credit, remaining, however, still the same promise 
to pay. B may transfer by check the same amount to C, 
and so on until at the end of six months Z gives his check 
to A, who pays his note at the bank and cancels that 
amount of credit money. If there are many banks in one 
city the clearing house makes them all like one bank, the 
checks being exchanged and the transfers made there. 
All of what the banks call deposits, so far as they are in 
excess of cash on hand, are, and must be, of this nature, 
— promises to pay on demand given in exchange for other 
promises on time, and cancelled by the payment of those 
promises. They act precisely like paper money in in- 
creasing the currency of a country, disordering its rela- 
tion to the rest of the world, causing unfavorable foreign 
trade, export of gold, and, unless sufficiently restrained, a 
suspension of specie payments. They are, however, liable 
to contraction in case of panic even more suddenly and 
violently than paper money. Thus in June, 1892, the 
deposits of the national banks in New York were 543 
millions. In July, 1893, fourteen months after, they were 
370 millions, a shrinkage of thirty-two per cent, while in 
November, 1894, they had returned to 595 millions. No 
doubt a part of this was by draft from the banks in other 
parts of the country, but a large part came from the can- 
celling of deposits by enforced payment of loans, which 
had shrunk in the first period from 493 millions to 406, or 
eighteen per cent. It is impossible to give any idea of 
the wreck of individual fortunes, the hardship and dis- 
tress of persons dependent upon labor which result from a 
bank panic like this. In like manner the deposits of all 
the national banks of the country were on the 9th of 
December, 1892, 1764 millions ; on the 3d of October, 
1893, 1451 millions, a shrinkage of eighteen per cent. 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 473 

In December, 1898, the deposits of the New York banks 
exceeded 800 millions. What may be the amount and 
effect of shrinkage in the next financial panic it is impos- 
sible to foresee, but the consequent distress and exaspera- 
tion will have results both social and political. 

It will show the vast change which has come over the 
country if we consider that the deposits in all the banks 
of the United States up to 1860 did not exceed 250 millions, 
while thirty -five years later they were : In national banks, 
as above, 1764 millions ; in State banks and trust com- 
panies, 1258 millions ; a total of 3022 millions. 1 

But the whole story is not yet told. It is a simple 
proposition that one dollar which passes through ten 
hands and makes ten purchases furnishes just as much 
money as ten dollars which change hands but once. In 
times of excitement and confidence, when everybody is 
buying and selling, and money . — including bank deposits 
— is circulating freely, prices rise, or, in other words, 
rapidity of circulation has the same effect in disordering 
the relation to other countries and the course of foreign 
trade and in causing an export of gold, as increase of gold 
or paper money or bank deposits, while it is much more 
liable than any of them to violent fluctuation in time of 
panic. No apology seems necessary for introducing a 
table so instructive as the following : — 

1 Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, December, 1895. 



474 



THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT 



Clearings of the New York Banks for the Years 
ending October 1 (in Millions) 



1854 


$5,750 


1866 


$28,717 


1877 


$20,876 


1888 


$30,863 


1855 


5,362 


1867 


37,407 


1878 


19,922 


1889 


34,796 


1856 


6,906 


1868 


27,004 


1879 


24,533 


1890 


37,660 


1857 


8,333 


1869 


29,300 


1880 


37,182 


1891 


34,053 


1858 


4,756 


1870 


32,636 


1881 


48,565 


1892 


36,319 


1859 


6,448 


1871 


29,300 


1882 


46,552 


1893 


34,421 


1860 


7,231 


1872 


32,636 


1883 


40,293 


1894 


24,230 


1861 


5,915 


1873 


33,972 


1884 


34,092 


1895 


28,264 


1862 


6,871 


1874 


20,851 


1885 


25,250 


1896 


29,350 


1863 


14,867 


1875 


23,042 


1886 


33,374 


1897 


31,327 


1864 


24,097 


1876 


19,875 


1887 


34,873 


1898 


39,853 


1865 


26,032 















Observe the small beginnings of 1854 ; the gradual 
increase till the panic of 1857 reduces the amount by 
nearly one-half ; how the quick recovery was again pros- 
trated at the opening of the war ; how rapid became the 
expansion with the suspension of specie payments, until, 
when our paper money had depreciated one-half, that is, 
when business was done at double prices, the transactions 
amounted to six times what they were eight years before ; 
how, with the return to specie payments, the transactions 
from 1873 to 1878 diminished by nearly one-half; how, 
Avith the issue of government legal tender paper against 
purchases of silver, they advanced till, in 1881, they 
touched the highest point ever reached ; and how in 1885, 
and again in 1894, they showed a collapse of twenty-seven 
and thirty per cent, respectively. If, now, we consider 
how profoundly such statistics enter into the national life, 
we can feel the importance of steadiness in the manage- 
ment of such tremendous yet delicate machinery, and how 
disastrous may be its working- in the hands of a large and 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 475 

disorganized body of men absorbed in the pursuit of party 
intrigues. 

From the view thus taken it appears that the relation 
of the money of any one country to that of the world, the 
solvency of the issuer being presupposed, must depend 
upon the quantity not merely of the paper money itself, 
but upon the deposits of the banking system and the ever 
fluctuating rapidity with which those deposits circulate 
by means of checks. From this it follows that it is wholly 
futile to compare the actual money of countries by the 
amount per head of population, because that leaves out of 
sight the other elements which upset the whole calculation. 
Equally idle is it to try to determine the proper amount of 
money by the " wants of trade." Trade will take any 
amount, more money merely meaning higher prices, and as 
rising prices means apparent profits, trade wants all the 
money it can get. In like manner the popular phrase 
4 elasticity i means indefinite expansion. In defence of 
currency issued by banks it is often said that they cannot 
put out more than trade requires. But in times of specu- 
lation and rising prices the banks furnish fuel which is 
readily absorbed in the shape of an excess of currency be- 
yond the normal average and beyond the proportion to 
the specie of the world; and then when the revulsion 
comes the rebound is too much the other way and the 
banks in order to save themselves and to redeem the notes, 
as well as to meet the demand of depositors rushing in 
upon them, are compelled to make violent exertions, the 
cost of which is paid by the public at large. 

There is but one effective measure of the safe expansion 
of a monetary system and that is the out- or in-flow of gold. 
But even this does not operate with any regularity. Gold 
may be a normal product of a country and exported like 
any other. How is it to be shown that such export is 
excessive ? Then again the effect of unfavorable foreign 



476 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

trade may be concealed by borrowing abroad and by ill- 
judged speculations and show itself later and all at once 
with disastrous suddenness. All that can be done is to 
make the index as sensitive as possible. 

For this purpose the most important provision of all is 
the separation of currency from banking. If the currency 
is issued by banks then the reserve of gold which a bank 
holds for its redemption is equally subject to the claims of 
note-holders and depositors. But the deposits are usually 
in large amounts and are always more or less unstable, so 
that, if distrust comes either of the currency as a whole or 
of a particular bank, a few large depositors can not only 
exhaust the reserve and cause the failure of that particu- 
lar bank, but can produce or greatly aggravate distrust of 
the currency itself and therefore of other issuing banks, 
and so bring down upon them both their depositors and 
note-holders. And though the banks may all maintain their 
solvency, yet from their efforts to do that there results a 
panic productive of infinite commercial distress, far beyond 
what is implied in correcting an excessive quantity of local 
currency as compared with that of the whole world and 
shown by the adverse state of foreign trade. In other 
words, the maintenance of a proper currency is mixed up 
with the solvency of the banks, thereby risking great and 
unnecessary disaster to a whole country. 

A second provision for the same purpose is that the 
currency of a country should be made a legal tender 
everywhere in that country except at specified places of re- 
demption. The opponents of government paper generally 
base their objections upon its being a legal tender. But 
even gold coin must be a legal tender for obvious reasons. 
In modern commerce there are hundreds of thousands of 
notes and obligations maturing every day at a certain hour 
and mostly paid within one or two hours, which must be 
met on pain of bankruptcy. It is not possible to have any 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 477 

question even with gold coin and bullion as to what will 
pay those notes, because creditors often wish to embarrass 
their debtors and because collecting agents like banks 
must have something which will relieve them from respon- 
sibility. There must be some money which the law says 
if tendered by the debtor shall be accepted by the creditor 
or the debtor go free. The intrinsic value of coin is of 
use only in international relations and as a check upon any 
sudden increase in the quantity of currency. The indi- 
vidual cares only to be sure that the currency with which 
he deals will be accepted in all transactions. 

We are now in a position to examine the English 
treatment of the currency question. During the Na- 
poleonic wars the Bank of England note was practically 
an inconvertible legal tender just as much as the French 
assignat or our greenback, but so skilful was the man- 
agement under the chancellor of the exchequer that the 
premium on gold during twenty years of a life-and-death 
struggle, in which all Europe was involved, never ex- 
ceeded fifteen or twenty per cent.; and four years after 
the battle of Waterloo, specie payments were resumed. 
For twenty -five years the currency was in an unsatis- 
factory condition, with financial panics and narrow es- 
capes from suspension of specie payments. A commission 
of experts was appointed who, after a thorough exami- 
nation following the lines of the bullion committee of 
1810, made a report. Upon this report Sir Robert Peel 
prepared an Act, which is known by his name as well 
as that of the Bank Act of 1844. It has now been in 
operation for half a century ; and even those who deny 
the soundness of the theory must admit that it has 
given almost complete satisfaction, that no effort has 
been made to disturb it, that there has never been the 
slightest question of specie payments, and that bank 
crises, though the banking system has been immensely 



478 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

extended, have diminished greatly in frequency and 
severity. 

The principle of that Act was as follows. Starting 
with the separation of currency from banking, it was 
said that if there was a pound, or as we should say a 
dollar, of gold behind every note issued, a failure of 
specie payments would be of course impossible. But 
this was not necessary. A certain amount of money was 
indispensable for transacting the daily business of the 
country. Before the paper money was reduced to this 
point the contraction and fall of prices would be so 
great that the necessities of business would prevent the 
presentation of notes for redemption, and meanwhile 
gold would be attracted from abroad in quantities suf- 
ficient to remove all danger. This security would be 
greatly increased if the notes were made a legal tender 
everywhere in England except at the place of issue, and 
thus the question of specie value of the notes kept wholly 
separate from that of whether the notes would be always 
safe for debtors as against creditors. The specie value 
was to depend upon the quantity of the notes alone. 
Upon this theory it was provided that the notes issued 
by the private and joint-stock banks should be limited 
to the amount in existence on a certain day in 1844, 
say, £8,600,000, to which should be added £14,000,000 
issued by the Issue Department of the Bank of England 
upon government debt, and that this total of £22,600,000 
should constitute the circulation uncovered by gold. Be- 
yond this that department was compelled to buy all gold 
offered at £3 17s. 9d. per ounce, and to give its notes in 
exchange, while, on the other hand, it was compelled to 
redeem in gold coin any of its notes presented, and to 
reduce the total amount by destro}dng those redeemed. 

The advantages gained were : 1. A suspension of 
specie payments was physically impossible. Three times 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 479 

within twenty-three years after the Act was passed, in 
cases where severe panic was threatened, the chancellor 
of the exchequer, upon application of the Bank of Eng- 
land, suspended the operation of the Act (a very different 
thing from suspending specie payments) so far as to 
allow an increase of the uncovered notes, the Banking 
Department at the same time, in order to check unneces- 
sary demands, being requested to make no loans at less 
than ten per cent, interest. The permission was only once 
made use of, and that to a trifling extent, as the moral 
conviction was sufficient that money could be obtained 
at some price if needed; and when the feeling of panic 
passed away, the excess of notes was quickly withdrawn. 
2. Being made a legal tender except at the place of 
redemption, the notes had in effect the government guar- 
antee, and the question of security was in no way mixed 
up with that of quantity. 3. As the gold in the Issue 
Department is held against the notes exclusively, the 
depositors in banks have nothing to do with it, the gold 
in the banks being kept merely for purposes of change. 
No failure of a bank, therefore, — even of the Bank of 
England, — could have any effect upon the currency 
without action of the government. 4. While the cur- 
rent export and import of gold are a matter of indiffer- 
ence, as soon as they are caused by too much or too 
little currency, whether in the form of note issues, bank 
deposits, or rapidity of circulation, this must be shown 
by the action upon the Issue Department ; a continued 
decrease of gold giving notice to the business of the 
country that, through contraction of the currency, lower 
prices and higher rates for money must be prepared for, 
while a continued increase of gold points to higher prices 
and lower rates for money. By a recent return, the 
Issue Department held 46 millions of pounds sterling, 
— say 230 millions of dollars in gold, — held exclusively 



480 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

against the note issues and forming a basis of bed-rock 
for the vast superstructure of deposit banking with its 
rapidity of circulation. This reserve, be it observed, is 
entirely independent of any fluctuations of banking or of 
government revenue or expenditure. 5. As the Act can- 
not be changed without the initiative of the chancellor of 
the exchequer, no matter how many interests may intrigue 
against it, the country goes quietly on its way in perfect 
security that no revolutionary action will imperil the 
basis on which all its transactions proceed. While, there- 
fore, Great Britain maintains forty millions of inhabit- 
ants in a space but little larger than New England 
with the State of New York, it may safely be said that 
in the last fifty years she has suffered less of strictly 
commercial distress than the United States with seventy 
millions spread over their vast area with its unbounded 
resources. 

We will next consider the course of currency legisla- 
tion in the United States. Down to the Civil War the 
currency may be said in general to have been furnished 
by State banks. The field was left to them by the discon- 
tinuance of the United States Bank in 1811, but within 
four years their difficulties had led to the creation of an- 
other bank by the federal government. This was practi- 
cally put an end to by the removal of the deposits by 
President Jackson in 1832, and after 1840 through the 
establishment of an independent treasury the government 
conducted its own business in specie and swung clear of 
paper currency and of State institutions. These were con- 
ducted on varying systems and with different degrees of 
credit in different parts of the country. Years were 
needed for recovery from the panic of 1837, and that of 
1857 was just succeeded b} r restored confidence when the 
outbreak of the war produced a fresh collapse. In the 
autumn of 1857 the writer of this work visited a town 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 481 

of considerable size on the Mississippi River in Iowa. 
The only money for the use of its inhabitants consisted 
of tickets issued by a grocer named Florence and it was 
known by that name, owing its circulation to the abso- 
lute necessity of having some money to replace that with- 
drawn by bank failures. This money was at twenty-five 
per cent, discount as compared with Illinois State money, 
which itself was at seventeen per cent, discount for Eastern 
funds. The ruinous effect upon business is evident. 

When the war began there was absolutely no money in 
the country with which to carry it on. Specie was in 
trifling amount and the State bank issues were too much 
discredited for government use. The Northern States 
were paralyzed, or, if we may keep up the simile of the 
atmosphere, asphyxiated for the want of an instrument of 
exchange. Under these circumstances was passed the Act 
of February 25, 1862, authorizing the issue of 150 millions 
of Treasury notes, made a legal tender for all public and 
private debts except duties on imports and interest on the 
public debt. Those who denounce this Act so violently 
are bound at least to show what else could have been done. 
The Constitution gives Congress the power to pass all laws 
necessary and proper for carrying out other powers ex- 
pressly given. Hon. Charles Sumner once told the writer 
that when the vote on the Act was coming in the Senate 
he and some others were distrustful of it. Mr. Chase 
being at the time in the lobby Mr. Sumner said to him, 
" I ask you, for the guidance of myself and my friends, if 
it is your opinion, as the financial head of the govern- 
ment, that this Act is necessary for carrying on the war ? " 
"Yes," replied Mr. Chase, "it is," and Mr. Sumner and 
his friends voted for it. Yet this same Mr. Chase, after 
the war was over and when the benefit of the legal tender 
money had been received and he was anxious to get rid of 
it, declared as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that 

2i 



482 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

the Act was unconstitutional because it was not necessary. 
On the other hand, on May 1, 1871, a majority of the 
Supreme Court of the United States decided that the Act 
was constitutional because under the circumstances it was 
necessary. Those who object to an excessive government 
currency, instead of ascribing to the impotence of Con- 
gress the failure to devise a remedy for that which having 
been a benefit had become an evil, limit themselves to 
denouncing the decision of the court. It would be 
much more to the purpose if they could show that the 
Act was not a necessity for carrying on the war. 

But apart from the necessity it may be maintained that 
the Act was not only harmless but beneficial. That the 
notes would ultimately be redeemed if the Union was pre- 
served was beyond doubt, and there was not a man, woman, 
or child in the country who was not bound to submit to 
a forced circulation for that object, especially if the notes 
were not too much depreciated in the meantime. These 
notes furnished the means of supplying and maintaining 
a large army, which without some such expedient would 
have been impossible. They furnished what the country 
had never had before, — a uniform money throughout its 
length and breadth. Being a legal tender they were 
everywhere received, and exchange from West to East 
and from South to North, instead of varying by a con- 
siderable percentage, never exceeded one-eighth to one- 
fourth per cent., a blessing which only those can appreciate 
who know the state of things which existed before the 
war. They furnished, again, for the first time, that ele- 
ment of which the importance has already been shown, 
— the separation of currency from banking ; without 
which anything like the present development of deposit 
banking would have been wholly impossible. Lastly, the 
profit in the saving of interest upon furnishing the cur- 
rency, to which the banks are keenly alive, belongs to the 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 483 

whole nation which uses the currency and not to the banks, 
which are private corporations. Even at three per cent, 
the saving on the first issue amounted to the not insignifi- 
cant sum of four and a half millions per annum. 

The real evil of the legal tender system lay in that 
which is a permanent and almost fatal objection to any 
government currency, — the question of quantity. As has 
been said, during twenty years of the Napoleonic wars 
Great Britain kept the Bank of England note from more 
than a small depreciation by limiting the quantity and 
resolutely selling the government debt as low as fifty 
cents on the dollar. The French assignats, because the 
government would not and probably could not keep them 
down by funding, were poured out in such quantities that 
within a few years they had lost all value and disappeared. 

In studying the New England colonial currencies it is 
apparent that the real difficulty was not in their legal 
tender quality nor even in their inconvertibility, but in 
the excessive quantity, constantly swelled by the rising 
prices caused by depreciation, while no attempt was made 
to check it except by current taxation just when that was 
hardest to bear. Precisely the same difficulty presented 
itself in the legal tender currency of the old Confederation 
of the United States. If the quantity, in either case, had 
been kept down by funding at high rates of interest, which 
even at that time might have been possible, and by that 
means the value of the notes had been kept close to par 
in gold, the cost of the wars might have been kept within 
reasonable dimensions, and then in a more convenient 
time of peace the funded debt redeemed by taxation, if 
that was thought advisable, without such suffering and 
loss of reputation. But then as now the government was 
practically in the hands of a legislature. 

With ample resources for carrying out the policy of 
England the United States took long strides in the direc- 



484 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tion of that of France. If the issue of greenbacks had 
been limited to the first one hundred and fifty millions, 
and then interest-bearing bonds had been sold at what- 
ever price was necessary to keep the notes at or near par 
in gold, they might have been pronounced to be the best 
money the country had ever had, no serious harm would 
have come from them, and they might easily have been 
withdrawn after the war was over. 

But that was not the policy of Secretary Chase. It 
may be said that Mr. Chase exemplified the one man 
leadership, and that Congress, as in other war methods, 
did just what the executive asked for. But though this 
was a case of one man power it did not provide for that 
which is really the main object to be sought, — one man re- 
sponsibility. He was never subjected to the test of public 
debate, and if he had been it is not in the midst of a crisis 
like that that the process of natural selection could go on. 
Mr. Chase was a lawyer by profession and had a lawyer's 
ingenuity, but no adequate financial training. His fixed 
idea was that the bonds must be sold at par and floated at 
that price with issues of paper money. The result was 
that while our own citizens paid nominally par for the 
bonds foreigners bought them at the gold price, which 
was at one time less than forty cents on a dollar, and as 
the paper money was measured by the same price of gold 
all values throughout the country were disordered in the 
same way. Three times, on February 25, 1862, July 11, 
1862, and March 3, 1863, Mr. Chase obtained from Con- 
gress Acts providing each for 150 millions of legal tender 
notes, till that body refused to go any further, illustrating, 
besides all else, the advantage of having the veto with the 
legislature. On the 30th of June, 1864, the amount in 
circulation stood at 448 millions. From various causes 
it was reduced to 356 millions, at which it stood till within 
a few years a further reduction of 10 millions left it in 
January, 1896, at 346 millions. 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 485 

But Mr. Chase was not so easily diverted from his pur- 
pose. On the 3d of June, 1864, was passed an Act to 
provide for a national bank system, according to which 
banks organized under the Act were authorized to issue 
currency to the amount of ninety per cent, of government 
bonds deposited with the Treasury, and upon which they 
were to receive the interest. It is not easy to perceive in 
what way these notes offer any advantage over the green- 
back. That they offer the assets of the bank as additional 
security to the government promise is of little consequence, 
as a government which should refuse to pay its own debts 
could hardly enforce upon the banks the payment of 
theirs. They are a legal tender to the United States for 
all dues except duties on imports, and from the United 
States except for interest on the public debt and redemp- 
tion of the national currency. 1 They are also a legal ten- 
der for all payments to banks by any persons. 2 They are 
redeemable either in gold or United States notes at the 
option of the banks. The Comptroller of the Currency 
has the whole burden of preparing and numbering the 
notes. He then delivers them to the banks, which add the 
signatures of their president and cashier, and put them in 
circulation. 3 The Treasurer of the United States is also 
bound to redeem the notes of all the national banks on 
presentation, and to look to the banks for payment. 4 That 
this is no mere form appears from the fact that as all the 
notes are precisely alike except as to the name of the 
issuing bank, and as they are a practical legal tender and 
circulate all over the United States, it is almost impossible 
to collect any considerable amount of the notes of any one 
bank for presentation, but the whole redemption and sort- 
ing out of the notes for return to the banks is done at 

1 Sec. 6182, Revised Statutes of the United States ; Act June 3, 1864, 
Sec. 23. 2 Sec. 5196 ; Act 1864, Sec. 32. 

3 Sec. 5172 ; Act 1864, Sec. 22. * Act June 20, 1874, Sec. 3. 



486 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Washington. Even the fact that these notes are not 
available for the cash reserves of the banks required by- 
law, and so for the purpose of extending the superstruc- 
ture of bank deposits, is neutralized by their furnishing 
general circulation and thus releasing the greenbacks to 
be used for bank reserves. 

The one advantage which the national bank notes might 
appear to offer is that of limiting the quantity of paper 
money, but even this can readily be shown to be illusory. 
For the first year after the Act was passed the amount of 
notes issued under it was comparatively small, as the State 
banks were at once reluctant to give up the greater profit 
of their own modes of issue and to come under the sterner 
control of the federal government. But after the Act of 
March 3, 1865, imposed a tax of ten per cent, upon State 
notes paid out by any bank the work went on briskly. 
The total amount of national bank notes outstanding was 
on January 1, 1866, $298,518,419 ; on January 2, 1874, 
1350,848,236. The lowest point next reached, probably 
owing to the fear of a return to specie payments, was 
in September, 1877, $ 316,665,958, but again the highest 
point ever attained was in October, 1882, 1362,889,134. 
In July, 1891, when the government was buying up bonds 
till they paid only one and one-half per cent., the amount 
fell to 1167,927,574, but with the renewed increase of debt 
and the higher rate of interest it again rose in Novem- 
ber, 1895, to 1213,887,630. In December, 1896, it was 
$210,689,985, and in October, 1897, $198,920,670. 

All these changes were very gradual and had no refer- 
ence to varying conditions of trade or of crops, but only 
to the degree of profit to be had from buying bonds as a 
basis of circulation. There can be no question that if in 
time of need the government would declare these notes 
a legal tender for all debts, or would even continue their 
existing privileges, and offer its bonds at a slightly 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 487 

better rate of interest, the notes could be increased to any 
desired extent. It thus appears that without equivalent 
service rendered, and assuming the amount of notes to be 
three hundred millions and the rate of interest to be three 
per cent., and after deducting the half per cent, tax and 
the loss of interest on the cost of bonds above ninety per 
cent., the people of the country are paying at least six 
millions of dollars annually to the national banks for 
furnishing a currency which might just as well be issued 
directly by the government, though this is of itself by no 
means a sufficient argument for such a government cur- 
rency. 

It will be observed that for some years after 1874 the 
total paper money was nearly seven hundred millions, or, 
if we exclude the State bank note currency then still out- 
standing, nearly twice as much as during the war. But 
the vast expansion of the business of the country absorbed 
even this amount, and without any conscious action by 
Congress the United States drifted back to specie pay- 
ments in 1878. 

One more phenomenon in relation to the currency 
remains to be considered, — the invasion of silver. By 
the Act of February 12, 1873, silver was demonetized, 
being legal tender in any form for no sums larger than 
five dollars, and thus gold was made the only metallic 
legal tender of the country. Why this was done, contrary 
to all previous practice, does not clearly appear, unless it 
was a following of the example of the German Empire, 
then so prominent from its victory over France. It was, 
however, of little consequence at the time, as silver was of 
equal market value with gold at our standard of 16 to 1, 
and at the European rate of 15 J to 1 was slightly more 
valuable abroad. Partly owing to demonetization in 
Europe and partly to increased production, the price of 
silver began to fall, and sank rapidly. 



488 



THE LESSON OF POPULAK GOVERNMENT 



In 1873 the market price in gold was 16 to 

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23 
26 
32 
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When the decline set in the silver mine owners of the 
West were exasperated by the fall of a product which 
they had regarded as equal to gold. With the peculiar 
aptitude of Congress already described for taking care of 
private interests, these silver men procured the passage 
of the Act of February 12, 1878, which was passed by a 
two-thirds vote of both houses over the President's veto. 
It directed the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase a 
minimum of two millions of ounces of silver every month 
and to coin it into dollars, which were to be legal tender 
equally with gold, and as nobody would undertake to 
transport such an enormous weight the Treasurer was 
authorized to give certificates of deposit at first in 
amounts of ten dollars, but in 1886 for sums of one, two, 
or three dollars. On July 19, 1890, as a substitute for 
this, and like it as a compromise under a threat of forc- 
ing through an Act for the free coinage of silver at a 
ratio of 16 to 1, another Act was passed directing the pur- 
chase each month of four million five hundred thousand 
ounces of silver and the issue of legal tender Treasury 
notes in payment for the same, which last Act was repealed 
with a kind of sullen protest in November, 1893. Early 
in 1896 the Senate of the United States passed a vote 
in favor of the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 
to 1, from which the country was saved by its resolute 
rejection by the House, and the chief issue in the presi- 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 489 

dential election of that year was a question which no 
other civilized government in the world would waste five 
minutes in considering. All the resulting agitation and 
alarm was forced upon the country by the truckling of 
the Senate of the United States to private interests. 

Under the two Acts referred to the Treasury bought 
five hundred millions of dollars' worth of silver, issuing 
against them as many legal tender notes, which it might 
just as well have issued without buying any silver at all. 
That silver is worthless for purposes of redemption, being 
of no more relative value than any other commodity, for 
example pig iron, and having lost while in the Treasury 
nearly half its cost value by the fall in the market price. 
Such finance is the direct result of government by a 
despotic legislature, without responsible leadership and 
holding its party majority together only by a trading of 
interests. 

Another serious consequence of these Acts is shown in 
the following extract from the report of the Secretary of 
the Treasury in December, 1895 : — 

On the first day of July, 1878, our total circulation, outside of the 
Treasury, was $729,132,634, while on the first day of December, 1895, 
it was $1,594,195,479, being an increase of more than 118 per cent., 
although the population of the country has increased only about 27 
per cent., and at the same time the use of credit instruments in place of 
cash has been very greatly increased in all large financial transactions. 

That is to say, a large extension of the superstructure 
of bank deposits has taken place upon this basis of paper 
money. It is in this item of bank deposits that the 
greatest danger consists. In the crisis of 1893 there was 
not the smallest discount as compared with gold on any of 
our six kinds of currency, gold and silver, gold and silver 
certificates, legal tender and national bank notes, but there 
was a discount of three to five per cent, on bank deposits 
through a large part of the country. The banks as usual 



490 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

saved themselves by a severe contraction of loans and de- 
posits, but the cost of the spasm was paid by the seventy 
millions of people who are dependent upon the manage- 
ment of those banks. 

As if to leave no stone unturned which could add to the 
difficulty of the situation, the cash in the Treasury, which 
is implied in the passage from revenue to expenditure, is 
so mixed up with the gold held for the redemption of 
notes as to leave room for discussion whether our trouble 
is in deficiency of revenue or excess of currency. The 
Senate jumped at the former conclusion by a vote for free 
coinage of silver, and the House by proposing a horizontal 
addition of fifteen per cent, to the tariff, while both of 
them, in their fear of causing unpopular disaster, refused 
to take any action towards funding the excess of currency. 
It is worth noting also that both are anxious to demonstrate 
the truth of their views by piling up expenditure in every 
direction except the administrative departments, in pinch- 
ing which they are ready to go to the extreme of meanness. 

Two dangers lie before us, that with a continued expan- 
sion of the currency we may be driven to a suspension of 
specie payments, or, on the other hand, that by spasmodic 
efforts at contraction without any distinct object in view 
the country may be subjected to constantly recurring dis- 
asters without any definite result. Probably the worst 
expedient that could be adopted would be the return to a 
system of issues by State banks, and yet with the subser- 
viency of Congress to private interests, that seems the one 
most likely to be resorted to. At all events, the most 
important and threatening domestic problem of the future 
is that of the currency, while nothing is more certain than 
that Congress as at present organized is absolutely incom- 
petent to deal with it. In the thirty years since the war 
closed, so far from arriving at a sound system we have been 
steadily receding from it, and there is no rashness in pre- 



xx PUBLIC FINANCE 491 

dieting that if we go on for another half-century as we 
are now all the trouble and disaster we may go through 
will bring us no nearer to a solution of the difficulty. 

Instead of trying to educate seventy millions of people 
in the complex principles of currency, the advocates of 
sound money would do well to bend their energies tow- 
ards bringing Congress into subjection to discipline under 
authoritative and responsible leadership. 

The author has been led to this somewhat dogmatic 
statement of the principles of currency by the fact that 
nearly half a century of study and experience, in and out 
of active business, has enforced strong convictions upon 
the subject. In fact, it was interest in it which first 
attracted his attention, immediately after the Civil' War, 
to the political organization and methods of the govern- 
ment. Whether the theory advanced is correct or not 
does not affect the main proposition, — that the great com- 
plexity and vast importance of the subject of the currency, 
as well as of the whole department of finance, furnish per- 
haps the strongest illustration of the total failure of our 
attempt at government by legislature and the imperative 
necessity of stronger executive government of some kind. 

It will hardly be denied that there has been no satisfac- 
tory condition of general business since 1893. An unde- 
fined dread of some violent change in the currency, not 
merely owing to the agitation for free silver, but also to 
the dissensions among the advocates of the gold standard 
as to what system of currency shall be adopted, in the 
absence of any firm authority to which the country can 
look with confidence, has predisposed all minds to panic 
and distrust. The inability of Congress to deal with 
pressing financial problems not only had much to do with 
bringing on the Spanish war, but has tended greatly to 
increase the exasperation between classes which is perhaps 
the most threatening symptom of the future. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 

TTTASHINGTON'S farewell address contains, among 
* * its other words of wisdom, a warning against the 
operation of party spirit, and this phrase is often made 
use of by public speakers without any very clear defini- 
tion of its meaning. The good or evil of party spirit 
depends upon the purpose for which the party is formed, 
upon its organization and methods of action. For ex- 
ample, the members of the original antislavery party have 
spent the last half of their lives in a state of serene satis- 
faction with the results they have achieved, notwithstand- 
ing the cumbrous and costly process by which these were 
obtained. If the basis of carrying on the government is 
to be the wishes of some millions of units, it is evident 
that they must to a greater or less extent agree in wish- 
ing for something. It is equally evident that they can- 
not all agree in wishing for the same thing at the same 
time, while if they, or any considerable number of groups, 
want different things at the same time the result in so far 
is anarchy. Government is paralyzed, and with the well- 
known excitability of humanity in groups men begin to 
confound the importance of the thing wanted with the 
importance of getting what they want. The clash of 
contending factions is apt to suggest the clash of arms. 
The first necessity, therefore, is the formation of large and 
coherent parties, not merely for the purpose of accomplish- 
ing what is desired by the majority of the people, but also 
for suppressing agitation and social disturbance on behalf 

492 



chap, xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 493 

of what may be merely objects of passion or private inter- 
est with comparatively small groups, at least until those 
objects enlist the support of a large minority. It must be 
observed further that the numbers of a group are not at 
all to be measured by the noise it makes, that the force of 
attack of a small but active and determined band may be 
quite out of proportion to the force of resistance even of a 
large majority of the people, and that the only way in 
which this latter force can be made available is through the 
union of a party. As the late Henry Wilson, certainly as 
far as experience goes a competent witness, once observed 
to the writer, the only way to carry on a free government 
is by organized, drilled, and disciplined parties. 

It may be said that an excess of party spirit is what 
is objected to. But that is only stating what is true 
of every principle of human action. What is excess? 
How is it determined, and how is it to be restrained 
within due limits ? The question may be made somewhat 
clearer if for the word 4 party ' we read ' faction,' that is, 
a violent minority seeking to rule in its own interest. 
Party may be, indeed to some extent must be, an instru- 
ment for reaching high and noble ends, while faction never 
can be anything but an evil. To form and maintain par- 
ties, yet to prevent them from degenerating into faction, 
is perhaps the most difficult task of representative govern- 
ment. 1 

1 The distinction between party and faction seems to be this ; that 
party aims at administrative control, while faction is the propaganda of 
a particular interest. Party, therefore, contains a principle of conserva- 
tism, inasmuch as it must always seek to keep faction within such bounds 
as will prevent it from jeopardizing party interests. An important con- 
sequence of the party instinct of comprehension is the tendency of oppos- 
ing party organizations to equalize each other in strength. The practical 
purpose of their formation causes each to compete for popular favor in 
ways that tend towards an approximately equal division of popular sup- 
port. Even in the greatest victory at the polls, the preponderance of the 
triumphant parties is but a small percentage of the total vote. The con- 



494 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

New parties cannot be formed on constantly changing 
issues, since to have any strength they must have a cer- 
tain degree of permanence. The only two nations which 
have succeeded in forming great national parties are Great 
Britain and the United States. In other European coun- 
tries the splitting into groups has almost made repre- 
sentative government impossible. In England, from the 
Revolution until the first parliamentary reform bill, a 
period of nearly a century and a half, the names of Whigs 
and Tories were practically unchanged. From 1832 to 
the present time the division has been into Conservatives 
and Liberals, and though the lines have of late been less 
strictly drawn they have been preserved by other influ- 
ences to be presently noticed. 

In the United States the parties until 1830 consisted 
of Federals who upheld the power of the general govern- 
ment, and Republicans who leaned towards State rights. 
With General Jackson grew up the Democratic party, suc- 
cessors to the then Republicans, who fell into their natural 
and permanent position of looking upon the people as a 
mass with an authoritative head embodying their will, 
while over against them stood the Whigs who, in what 
was perhaps their chief reason of existence, a protective 
tariff, developed their natural tendency towards an aristo- 
cratic character with the belief that governments should 
be in practice in the hands of the select few. The war 
swept away these distinctions, and the new Republican 
party, successor to the Whigs, was built up on antislavery 
grounds. It is an illustration of the necessity and strength 
of party, that while the Democrats had no especial reason 
for resisting the war, and while, in fact, a large part of 

servative function of party is not duly appreciated because its operation 
is negative. What is done is known, but how far the impulse which pro- 
duced the act has been moderated cannot be known. — Henry Jones Ford, 
" The Rise and Growth of American Politics," Chap. IX. 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 495 

them were thoroughly loyal to the Union, they did keep up a 
sullen opposition to it. The underlying idea doubtless was 
that of the original Republican-Democrats, — the right of 
the several States and their people to judge for themselves. 
With the close of the war of course the division line 
of slavery disappeared and a new basis of the two great 
parties had to be sought for. In a former chapter (III.) 
it has been argued that the only effective ways of uniting 
masses of men are three : self-interest, moral enthusiasm, 
and enthusiasm for persons. As to self-interest the multi- 
tude not only differ very greatly in their ideas but they 
are liable to be grossly deceived with regard to them. 
When this is the only motive force power falls into the 
hands of a few men who, knowing clearly what they want, 
are able to persuade the multitude that the interest of all 
is identical with theirs. Moral principles, though much 
more definite, are still more or less abstract and liable to 
be exploited by small numbers or bodies of men who make 
use of them to deceive the multitude for their own pur- 
poses. The history of the great religions, Roman, Chris- 
tian, Mohammedan, Brahmin, and Buddhist, is sufficiently 
illustrative of this. Personality, when uncontrolled, like- 
wise has its drawbacks, as in a Louis XI V., a Frederick II. , 
and a Napoleon, but it has this advantage, — that it is dis- 
tinctly visible, and that the multitude can judge it and 
form an estimate of it. If adequate machinery is pro- 
vided through a legislature for forming and guiding that 
judgment and enforcing its behests, then the government 
will respond to public opinion, being good if that is good 
and bad if that is bad. Personality has the further ad- 
vantage that it typifies and concentrates in the public 
mind a cause or a principle, even as the point of a light- 
ning rod draws lightning from a cloud ; so that the union 
of the personal with the moral stimulus constitutes the 
most irresistible of political forces. 



496 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Perhaps under no government has this force of person- 
ality been so marked and continuous as in Great Britain. 
Sir Robert Walpole, the elder and the younger Pitt, Lord 
North, Earl Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Mr. 
Gladstone, Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury, form an 
almost unbroken chain for nearly two centuries. In the 
hands of these men party has been the most powerful of 
instruments. That it should upon the whole and in the 
long run work for good was made secure by the permanent 
organization of the Opposition in Parliament. As the 
government was in the hands of individuals who formed 
the ministry of the time and who were responsible for it, 
so the Opposition, to give any success to its criticism of 
and attacks upon the ministry, was compelled to choose 
its own individual leaders and to follow them obediently. 
As these leaders would themselves become the ministry 
upon a change of government they furnished in their 
attacks in opposition a standard by which they were them- 
selves to be judged, and had to be careful not to exagger- 
ate lest they should put weapons into the hands of their 
opponents in turn. In this way the standard of public 
life and conduct in office was gradually but steadily raised 
in full view of public opinion, the two acting and reacting 
upon each other. 

Of course there were intervals when smaller men were 
at the head of public affairs. But the traditions of the 
great parties, their discipline and obedience, and the prin- 
ciple that all legislation should be initiated by ministers, 
instead of allowing any member or group of members to 
fly off in pursuit of political fancies and so breaking the 
party into discordant fragments, held them in an attitude 
of passive waiting on events. Under a Pulteney, a New- 
castle, a Bute, a Spencer Perceval, a Goderich, or an Aber- 
deen, the parties remained in the position of potential 
expectation. Not that they were torpid. A constant 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 497 

effervescence was striving to evolve the master hand and 
voice which should summon them to a new forward move- 
ment. But until the master came who could see his way 
more or less clearly to the assumption of heavy responsi- 
bility, the country was allowed to rest in peace secure 
from reckless, incoherent, irresponsible, and revolutionary 
legislation. That even under leaders so obtained there 
have been grave and dangerous mistakes is a matter of 
course, but it may fairly be said that nowhere else have 
they been reduced so near the minimum consistent with 
human infirmity. 

Never, perhaps, in any country has there been a great 
national party more thoroughly coherent or made up of 
better material than the Republican party in the United 
States at the close of the war. Starting as an offshoot of 
the antislavery movement from a time of profound peace 
it had achieved great military success. It had got rid of 
the incubus of slavery, which for a generation had threat- 
ened to destroy the work of the Federal Constitution. It 
had brought out the Union, which in the opinion of the 
civilized world had gone hopelessly to pieces, in greater 
strength and more firmly bound together than ever. And 
at the apex of the structure stood the mighty personality 
of Abraham Lincoln, all the more imposing that the wearer 
had been struck down at the moment of greatest success. 
Almost all of the highest intelligence, the purest enthusi- 
asm, and the most earnest purpose of the country responded 
without hesitation to any call in the name of the Republican 
party. And the force of the impulse was so great that 
thirty years later that name is still a spell to conjure with, 
even as the waters of a rapid river retain their separate 
character far out into the sea. But the animating spirit 
was gone. The question of slavery was eliminated for- 
ever, notwithstanding the efforts of the leaders to keep it 
alive. Economic questions, currency and the tariff, had 
2k 



498 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

a certain degree of interest, but the people did not under- 
stand them. It was curious to see how when one of these 
was made the basis of a political campaign crowds would 
flock to hear speakers, who themselves possessed knowl- 
edge of the most elementary kind, and how bewildered 
the audiences were at the end. Yet this was the method 
looked to to guide the policy of a great nation. Even 
civil service reform with its highly moral side lost most 
of its force, because the politicians were half-hearted in 
its defence and its most ardent advocates were outside of 
politics altogether. Of real leadership and guidance there 
was not a trace. 

One of the highest productions of modern art is a large 
orchestra. Seventy-five or one hundred men, each a per- 
fect master of his instrument, are joined together, and 
under a skilled conductor of genius they interpret the 
works of the great composers with ravishing perfection. 
Replace that conductor with an inferior, or if it is conceiv- 
able ask them to play without any leader at all, and note 
the cacophony which will result notwithstanding the skill 
of each individual. 1 The experience of our war showed 
how the fate of armies substantially alike in character 
depended upon the quality of the general placed over 
them. Yet the worst general which we had was better 
than a committee of generals. We ask seventy millions 
of people to do what it will be admitted that no orchestra 
and no army could ever do. 

Nor does it mend the matter that public affairs are 
intrusted to Congress, which itself, so far as it is not ruled 
by the lobby, turns helplessly to the people for guidance. 
It has been already shown, though it cannot be too often 

1 How sour sweet music is 

When time is broke, and no proportion kept ! 
So is it in the music of men's lives. 

— Shakspeare, "Richard II.." v. 5. 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 499 

repeated, that Congress is itself little more than a mob ; 
that its members do not represent the country, but only 
their States or districts, and have no influence or authority 
outside of them ; that these members are in no way re- 
sponsible for administration or government, and that their 
legislation is framed not with reference to those great 
objects but solely for party success ; that even party suc- 
cess does not mean adherence to a continuous policy under 
the guidance of leading and tried statesmen, but a fortui- 
tous concurrence of equal atoms held together by the 
most strenuous exertions of managing politicians working 
through an appeal to private interests. Accordingly, the 
demand, and therefore the supply, is not for statesmen at 
all, but for skilful wire-pullers who can prevent the shift- 
ing majority from dissolving altogether. Such men are 
not big enough, even if they had the opportunity, to carry 
on government, and this, as well as the jealousy of indi- 
vidual prominence which always exists in a legislative 
body, insures that everything shall be done by committees. 
From the consequent suppression of personality and the 
concealment of motives and inducements for legislation 
which committee work involves, all moral and personal 
enthusiasm in the people is discouraged. Hence it is that 
the great Republican party formed by the war has become 
a stringless instrument. The rank and file are as sound 
as ever and as ready for good and honest work, but the 
offices are filled by a set of men, to speak generally, dis- 
honest so far as they are able and insignificant so far as 
they are honest, who get the control of nominating con- 
ventions, and carry elections by appeals to the remnant 
of enthusiasm left over from the war. The people ask 
for bread and they are offered a stone. 

As to the management of Congress, it would be difficult 
to point to a single well-considered measure since the war 
closed which was passed distinctly in the interest of the 



500 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

people at large. Everything is done either directly in the 
interest of party supremacy, or with a reckless ignorance of 
and disregard for the administrative consequences of Acts 
which may be passed. In illustration of the last point 
take the Interstate Commerce Commission, constituted 
February 4, 1887, with large executive powers but with- 
out any intervention of the executive branch beyond the 
appointment of its members ; a device of which we shall 
see some interesting developments under the State gov- 
ernments. This commission proceeded to suppress cer- 
tain arrangements of the railroad companies, such as 
pooling, long and short haul rates, etc., and the companies 
and the holders of their securities were subjected to 
enormous and ruinous losses while it was being demon- 
strated to the satisfaction of the commission that these 
arrangements were the best which the experience of the 
railroad companies had been able to devise for mitigating 
the disastrous effects of unrestricted competition. Exam- 
ples have already been given in the tariff, the currency, 
and the finances generally of the combined effect of igno- 
rance and the struggle for party supremacy. For a pure 
sample of the latter, reference may be made to the Force 
Bill, which passed the House of Representatives by a vote 
of 155 to 149 on July 2, 1890. The purport of this bill 
was to place the elections for members of Congress under 
the control of the federal power instead of, as now, under 
the State governments, the object being to secure the 
intimidated negro vote in the South for the Republican 
party. All its other far-reaching consequences were put 
out of sight for the sake of this. 

The first revolt against this inherited Republican 
supremacy came with the nomination of James G. Blaine 
for the presidency in 1884 and the election of the first 
Democratic President since the war. The fact may be 
noted without discussing the merits of the case. The 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 501 

weariness and disgust of the country with Republican 
management culminated in 1890, when the elections re- 
sulted in a Democratic majority in both houses, and the 
change was completed in 1892 by the addition of a Demo- 
cratic President, the Republican, Harrison, having inter- 
vened between Mr. Cleveland's two terms. 1 

And now a new object-lesson in party government 
presented itself. The Republican party, like their prede- 
cessors the Whigs and to some extent the Federalists, may 
be called the aristocratic party. Their theory in practice, 
if not avowedly, is that the people should select a small 
number of the best citizens, and handing over public 
affairs to them should go about their business and trouble 
themselves no further, unless to keep firm in the party 
ranks. An impersonal government, therefore, by committee 
and legislature does not shock them, and they are prepared 
to get on by conciliation and compromise. This quality, 
added to the inheritance of the war and the practice of 
a quarter of a century, enabled them to govern after a 
fashion, even if they governed badly. The Democrats, 
on the other hand, are nothing without leadership. In- 
sisting on equality, while they are at the same time decid- 
edly self-assertive, they need a strong personality to keep 
them in working order. Having, besides, been under a 
cloud during the war and ever since without any practice 
of party discipline, they were, as a party, in a state of 
complete anarchy, quarrelling at once with each other and 
with the President. It is not surprising that the short 
period of one Congress should have brought disastrous 
failure, and that the country, concluding that the frying- 

1 In December, 1891, the first session of the Fifty-second Congress, the 
figures were, — House: Republicans 88 ; Democrats 233. Senate: Repub- 
licans 47 ; Democrats 39. 

In December, 1893, the first session of the Fifty-third Congress, — 
House : Republicans 126 ; Democrats 220. Senate : Republicans 38 ; 
Democrats 44. 



502 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

pan of the Republicans was a less evil than the fire of the 
Democrats, again reversed the situation. 1 

Note that the Republicans offered no new policy or any 
prospect of reform. The simple reasoning was in effect, 
" We may have been bad, but the Democrats are worse, 
and you will have to come back to us." And the country 
came to regard a state of things which had filled it with 
wrath and disgust as upon the whole and by comparison 
rather desirable. Consider next how rapidly a govern- 
ment must decline in character and in the respect of the 
people under a logic like that, and what a boundless 
prospect it opens to skilled rascality. 2 

A single session, however, was sufficient to throw doubt 
upon the soundness of this conclusion and to leave the 
country in a state of indecision as to which of two evils 
was the least. One proposition seems to be approaching 
the clearest demonstration, — that reform in our national 
politics does not depend merely upon a change of parties. 
At present both suffer from the same difficulty, — the 
attempt to make an orchestra play symphonies without 
a conductor, an army to win battles without a general. 
Yet if any effective reform is ever to come, the present 
organization of parties is of the highest value. 

It is a striking proof of the sound instinct and political 
sense of our people that notwithstanding the unsteadiness 
of the ranks at the top, the bodies of the two great parties 
remain almost intact. The great mass of the voters is 
divided on these two lines, ready, if properly led, for 
good work by mutual competition. But there are signs 
of disintegration which make it doubtful how long this 
will endure. Impatient with the failures of parties, fac- 

1 In December, 1895, the figures were, — House : Republicans 249 ; 
Democrats 94 ; Others 7. Senate : Republicans 44 ; Democrats 40 ; 
Others 6. 

2 It is hardly necessary to point out how greatly this reasoning is 
strengthened by the presidential and congressional campaign of 1896. 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 503 

tions are constantly trying to get the upper hand. Nor 
by the word 'faction' is it meant that the objects are 
necessarily bad. Often they represent ends good in them- 
selves, but details of government put forward either by 
theorists, who exaggerate their importance, or by individ- 
uals seeking for advancement in politics. As instances 
of such details flourished from 1852 to 1860 the Know- 
nothing party, based on opposition to foreigners, which 
elected the governors in some States and was narrowly 
beaten in others. The Greenback party, which advocated 
large issues of legal tender paper, held a nominating con- 
vention in 1886 at which nineteen States were represented, 
and nominated candidates for President and Vice-Presi- 
dent. The Prohibitionists, though most active in the 
several States, yet in 1872, 1876, 1880, and 1884 held 
nominating conventions and presented candidates for 
President and Vice-President. A so-called Labor party 
has gathered a considerable following, and another equally 
indefinite, known as Populists, has secured a certain num- 
ber of members both in the Senate and in the House. 
The strongest factions thus far, however, appear to be 
the American societies based upon the original Know- 
nothing party, and of which the principal branch is the 
American Protective Association, largely Anti-Catholic. 
These societies have been said, though probably on not 
very reliable data, to command from two to four million 
votes, say one-sixth to one-third of the total vote of the 
country, and to influence something like one-half of the 
members of both houses. 1 The Independent or Mug- 
wump element, which deserted the Republican party upon 
the nomination of James G. Blaine in 1884, can hardly be 
called a separate party, as its members are inclined for 
the most part to cast their votes with the Republican or 

1 General Michener of Indiana, in the Boston Herald, April 20, 1896. 



504 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

Democratic party, as either seems to offer at the time the 
best prospect of action for the public welfare. 

It is true that these different movements have not 
seriously broken into the old parties. Mr. Bryce says: 1 — 

Why, considering the reluctant hesitancy of the old parties in 
dealing with new questions, and considering also that in the immense 
area of the United States with its endless variety of economic inter- 
ests and social conditions we might expect local diversities of aim and 
view which would crystallize and so give rise to many local parties — 
why are not the parties far more numerous ? Why, too, are the parties 
so persistent? In this changeful country one would look for frequent 
changes in tenets and methods. 

One reason may be found in the enormous trouble and expense 
required to found a new national party. To influence the votes, even 
to reach the ears of a population of sixty millions of people, is an 
undertaking to be entered on only when some really great cause fires 
the national imagination, disposes the people to listen, persuades the 
wealthy to spend freely of their substance. It took six years of intense 
work to build up the Republican party, which might not even then 
have triumphed in the election of 1860 but for the split in the ranks 
of its opponents. The attempt made in 1872 to form a new Inde- 
pendent party out of the discontented Republicans and the Democrats 
failed lamentably. The Independent Republicans of 1884 did not 
venture to start a programme or candidate of their own, but were 
prudently satisfied with helping the Democratic candidate, whom they 
deemed more likely than the nominee of the Republican party con- 
vention to give effect to the doctrine of Civil Service Reform which 
they advocate. 

Why, however, do not the professional politicians, who " know the 
ropes " and know where to get the necessary funds, more frequently 
seek to wreck a party in order to found a new one more to their mind ? 
Because they are pretty well satisfied with the sphere which existing 
parties give them and comprehend from their practical experience 
how hazardous such an experiment would be. 

Still there is no doubt that all such efforts tend to 
disintegrate the national parties, to render the voters 
more apathetic and less interested, and to weaken the 
cohesion and party loyalty which form so invaluable a 
working force in time of need. 

1 "American Commonwealth,' 1 Vol. II., pp. 17 and 20. 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 606 

As an illustration of the effect in popular government 
of looking to popular impulse for the initiation of meas- 
ures, it may be observed that perhaps the worst of all 
expedients for remedying the defective working of a 
government by legislature like ours, that which combines 
the evils of them all, is one which is urged by perfectly 
disinterested advocates of reform and is known as propor- 
tional representation. If there is one principle at the 
base of popular government, it is that the majority shall 
rule. If the largest of three or four fractions is to rule 
it ceases to be popular government and becomes govern- 
ment by faction. If the tyranny of the majority is bad, 
a tyranny of the minority is still worse. A great outcry 
is made because the decision of any question may rest 
with a half plus one of the people. But that only means 
that the people do not take interest enough in the par- 
ticular question to give a larger majority, and even so it is 
better than a half minus one. It must be remembered 
that the most important function of all government is to 
prevent ill-considered action, to insure that existing con- 
ditions of society shall not be overturned or even seri- 
ously modified until the public mind, as expressed by the 
majority, is clearly made up that it wishes for the change 
and is prepared to indicate by its approval in what direc- 
tion and to what extent a change shall be made. 

No doubt the minority should always be given a fair 
hearing, should have every opportunity of criticising its 
opponents and holding them to a strict responsibility, and 
of striving to convert public opinion to its views. There 
are two agencies for doing this, both of which we have 
carefully neutralized. One is the presiding officer, such 
as the Speaker of the House, whose business it should be 
to protect the minority and give it every reasonable 
chance to be heard. The other is an executive ministry, 
acting for the whole country, responsible for administra- 



606 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

tion, and open to the individual and public criticism of 
members of the Opposition. As already shown, we have 
made the Speaker a pure partisan elected by the majority, 
forming the majority in committees from the majority 
which elected him, and using all the strength of his posi- 
tion to force through the schemes of the majority without 
any discussion at all ; while on the other hand we have 
excluded the Cabinet from all voice in the guidance of, 
and all responsibility for, legislation of any kind. 

How completely the result corresponds to these arrange- 
ments is shown by this, that the Senate, which does not 
elect or obey its presiding officer and from which the 
Cabinet is excluded, has become a mere debating club in 
which a few determined obstructionists can indefinitely 
paralyze the whole body and, as in the case of free silver, 
compel submission to their will ; while in the House, 
from which the Cabinet is also excluded, the rule of the 
Speaker as established by Mr. Reed has become so abso- 
lute that the majority boasts of its despatch in passing 
legislation without debate. As a case in point, on the 
14th of April, 1896, a committee of the whole House, in a 
single sitting, with one speech from the chairman of 
a committee and one from another member and a few 
random questions, passed an appropriation of ninety-seven 
millions for coast defences, that is, guns and fortifications 
alone, and having reported its action to the House that 
body confirmed it the same day without any discussion at 
all. To try to replace the want of the agencies referred 
to by splitting up these bodies into fractions striving after 
different objects of detail would be merely to make con- 
fusion worse confounded, and to increase the corrupt 
trading of special interests. We shall have to consider 
proportional representation still further in State affairs. 

It must be observed that parties in the nation and in 
Congress are quite different tilings. In the nation they 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 507 

are based : 1. upon certain traditional principles ; 2. upon 
principles supposed to be enunciated in the platforms 
issued by the national conventions, the efforts of which 
to establish a firm standing-ground are often ludicrous to 
an extreme ; 3. upon the inextinguishable thirst for per- 
sonality which politicians, not merely the bad but the 
good, are constantly striving to suppress but as constantly 
find themselves obliged to take into account. 1 But as 
soon as we turn to Congress all these elements at once 
disappear. For the first two the members care little or 
nothing beyond a formal respect necessary for appear- 
ances, while for personality their hostility is most deter- 
mined. Each one feels himself to be the equal of any 
other and will tolerate no superiority. The temporary 
elevation of committees is suggestive of the efforts of a 
person in a crowd to raise himself upon the shoulders of 
his neighbors. A slight movement on their part will 
quickly bring him back to his level. As we have seen, 
the absolute necessity of some control has compelled the 
House to intrust great power to the Speaker, but he is 
after all only one of themselves and they take very good 
care that he shall remain the slave of the party majority. 

1 But while the adoption of a platform is now an accepted party obli- 
gation, the duty is not discharged with complete sincerity. Platform 
utterances have become so vague and ambiguous that the tendency of 
public sentiment is to attach much less importance to them than to the 
declaration of the presidential candidate. Mr. Blaine, in a review article 
published just before the election of 1892, thus described the change which 
has taken place. 

"The resolutions of a convention have come to signify little in deter- 
mining the position of president or party. Formerly the platform was of 
first importance. Diligent attention was given not only to every position 
advanced, but to the phrase in which it was expressed. The presiden- 
tial candidate was held closely to the text and he made no excursion 
beyond it. Now, the position of the candidate, as defined by himself, is 
of far more weight with the voters, and the letter of acceptance has come 
to be the legitimate creed of the party." — H. J. Ford, op. cit., Chap. XVI. 

A striking illustration of the way in which public opinion is crystal- 
lizing towards the executive. 



508 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

How, then, are the parties held together ? The answer 
has already been given in two words, " log-rolling " and 
"lobbying." The problem is to bring together and keep 
together more than a half of two separate bodies com- 
posed of equal units. Two influences are rigidly ex- 
cluded, the interest of the whole people and that of the 
government administration, neither of which has any rep- 
resentative in either House. Apart from these, every 
expedient is brought to bear which can be devised by a 
class of men as keen and bold at such work as can be 
found in the world. The instrument through which they 
operate is the private interest of members, an interest 
which is rendered doubly available by the fact that while 
there is almost no personal distinction to be won in Con- 
gress, the loss of reputation is covered by the shield of 
party, which protects from personal responsibility. There 
is no other process by which legislation, good or bad, can 
be obtained, and in such a struggle the bad has decidedly 
the advantage. The voters are urged to send to Con- 
gress men of character, ability, and public spirit. They 
might as well be asked to select men of that quality to 
follow the profession of burglars, a comparison which is 
not intended to convey any disrespect to the numbers of 
honest and respectable men who constantly are sent to 
Congress. Chosen as burglars they would fail just the 
same in the business. 

It is not the men who make the conditions of work. 
It is the conditions of work which make the men. There- 
fore it is that the great trusts and monopolies which have 
sprung up through the country are learning more and 
more every year that they have only to bring together 
sufficient money power to work their will with Congress. 
Therefore it is that each succeeding Congress falls lower 
and lower, irrespective of party, and that nominating con- 
ventions are captured by men who offer to the people as 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 609 

the candidates of either party those between whom there 
is very little to choose. Hear what is said by an ex-mem- 
ber of Congress who is pursuing a private occupation in 
Washington. 1 

I see enough every day to satisfy me that the petitions, prayers, 
protestations, and profanity of sixty millions of people are not as 
strong to control legislative action as the influence and effort of the 
head of a single combine with fifty millions of dollars at his back. 

If any reader thinks that this picture of affairs is exag- 
gerated, he is invited to study the operation of the same 
causes in the States and the cities. The evil is not depend- 
ent upon party and cannot be remedied by a mere change 
of party. It is sometimes ascribed to an inordinate greed 
for money. There is no more greed for money here than 
in other countries. It is the organization of Congress 
which offers every facility at once to those who wish to 
buy and those who wish to be bought. "Wheresoever 
the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered to- 
gether." 2 

It is a much vexed question, how far the obligations of 
party are binding upon voters. If, as we have argued, 
consolidated and disciplined parties are a necessity for 
carrying on a free government, then the claims of party 
cannot be ignored. It must first be asked, however, upon 
what basis do such claims rest. We have found that 
personality must be eliminated, at least from a political 
point of view. The demand for it, indeed, is so strong 
that it cannot be suppressed altogether, but it is made to 

1 Hon. Benjamin H. Butterfield, of Ohio. 

2 Indeed it is a fact, and we may as well admit it first as last, that the 
great majority of the people throughout the country are disgusted with 
Congress in general and the Senate in particular. The most popular thing 
we could do to-day, and probably in the present condition of affairs the 
most beneficial thing we could do, would be to pass the necessary appro- 
priation bills and go home. The mere fact that we are in session is a 
menace to the revival of business and the return of prosperity. (Senator 
Smith of New Jersey, in the senate-chamber, February 10, 1896.) 



610 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

turn either upon personal qualities outside of politics or 
upon the typifying of certain supposed principles or more 
simply still a mere dummy labelled with a party name. 
Nothing in our politics is more striking than the rapid 
disappearance of public discussion before the people pre- 
ceding elections, as it has already practically disappeared 
from our legislatures. The nominating conventions are 
held constantly nearer to the elections so as to allow the 
least possible time for consideration. The candidates 
appear, if at all, only as declaimers of generalities, while 
of subordinate speakers there are practically none. 

There was an exception in appearance before the elec- 
tion in the city of New York in 1897. But the speaking 
was done almost wholly by the independent candidates 
talking upon city affairs, the candidates of the great 
national parties taking no part at all, the Democratic ab- 
solutely and the Republican in effect. Even in national 
elections, where the power of personality is strongest, the 
candidate, being an unknown quantity, is not taken for 
what he is but for what he is supposed to be, the imagina- 
tion of the people being worked upon in every possible 
way. 

In the legislature personality is suppressed even more 
effectually than in the executive, and legislation is so 
much the result partly of chance and partly of intrigue, 
that it cannot possibly form any stable basis of party. 
The result is that the establishment of the platform, the 
principles upon which the party shall take its stand, has 
fallen into the hands of conventions, the same which 
nominate the candidates, and these conventions, in a 
degree which to an inexperienced observer would seem 
incredible, have fallen into the hands of a very few 
persons. 

Party is as old as politics itself, and the operation of party in work- 
ing the machinery of government is seen in all countries having free 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 611 

institutions; but of party as an external authority, expressing its 
determinations through its own peculiar organs, the United States as 
yet offers to the world the only distinct example, although tendencies 
in that direction are showing themselves in England. There is still, 
however, nothing of which the British Parliament is more intolerant 
than an assumption that there exists any constitutional authority 
exterior to its own, which can claim to give expression to the will of 
the people. No less keen a jealousy might have been expected from 
the Congress of the United States, which, according to the Constitu- 
tion, directly represents both the people and their State governments. 
Assuredly nothing would have been more incomprehensible and aston- 
ishing to the framers of the Constitution than to have been informed 
that a political jurisdiction would be established, unknown to the Con- 
stitution and without warrant of law, whose determinations would 
be recognized as entitled to delineate the policy of the administra- 
tion and bind the proceedings of Congress. Such obligation, though 
constantly paltered with by factious interests and constantly evaded by 
tricky politicians, is nevertheless unreservedly admitted. To such an 
extent is this submission carried that it is not an uncommon thing for 
members of Congress to admit that they are under compulsion of such 
obligation against their own judgment and belief. 1 

The question at once presents itself, By whom is such 
obligation imposed ? Is it any recognized authority, ac- 
knowledged as representing the popular will ? Nothing 
of the kind. It is simply a combination of political in- 
triguers who by strength of will and skilful manipulation 
are able, without assuming any personal responsibility, to 
impose their wishes upon caucuses and conventions as the 
binding principles of the party. 

The net outcome then is, that party allegiance on the 
part of the voters is claimed for certain abstract proposi- 
tions, prepared by a perfectly impersonal and irresponsi- 
ble committee and accepted by a convention of delegates, 
strangers to each other and in one session of a few hours 
on a single day. This allegiance it is attempted to enforce 
by the most rigid discipline and by excluding from the 
caucuses, which elect delegates to nominating conventions, 
or which decide upon the adoption of principles or legis- 
1 "Rise and Growth of American Politics," Chap. XXIII. 



512 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

lative action, all who have not steadily voted for the reg- 
ular party candidate and thereby accepted the regular 
party principles. 

The consequences resulting from such enforcement of 
party rule are most serious. It means that the conserva- 
tive and sober portion of both parties is dragged onward 
by the most violent portion of each, parading the spectre 
of the opposite party. 

Another consequence of the condition of party is its 
effect upon the voters. How can they possibly feel any 
interest in politics which are conducted in this way? 
Supposing that all the voters were from a sense of duty to 
turn out and attend the primaries with an earnest inten- 
tion of electing the best men ; of what use is it when 
neither candidates nor platforms have politically any 
meaning ? How long can the voters be expected to put 
themselves to trouble and mortification for such shams as 
that ? And is not boss rule a perfectly natural result of 
such a procedure ? The persistent adherence to the great 
parties, in spite of all their shortcomings, instead of 
throwing away votes upon side issues, is the strongest tes- 
timony to the loyalty, the conservatism, and the political 
sense of the people. 

If the great parties must exist and if no new party can 
be formed, at least upon any questions which are now in 
sight, any hope of improvement must take place within 
the party lines. That improvement must come from 
above and not from below. The voters must be led and 
not driven. Instead of dragooning them into submission 
to party tests made up for that purpose, they should be 
won in perfect freedom by the qualities of the men who 
stand as party leaders and the conduct of government in 
the hands of those men. How that end may be obtained 
will be the subject of discussion in a later stage of this 
work. 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 613 

The student of history who knows that the anarchy of 
the Long Parliament threw England into the hands of 
Cromwell, and the anarchy of the Legislative Assembly 
and the Convention threw France into the hands of Napo- 
leon, and who feels that the anarchy of the present French 
chambers threatens to produce a similar result, may nat- 
urally ask himself what is to be the outcome of the anar- 
chy of the Congress of the United States. A military 
despotism seems beyond the reach of imagination. That 
this great country with practically no standing army and 
with some fifty State governments, each with its separate 
organization, its local militia, and its independent popula- 
tion, should fall under the absolute rule of a soldier, 
seems so chimerical as to excite laughter. The events of 
the years 1895 and 1896, however, throw a lurid light 
upon the question. It is one of the commonest observa- 
tions of history that when the rulers of a country cannot 
manage its internal affairs they seek to divert and concen- 
trate public attention by foreign war. When the French 
Legislative Assembly had fully proved its impotence the 
Girondists, who were neither ignorant nor unpatriotic 
men, deliberately devised this expedient for consolidating 
the distracted nation. The Jacobins, who at first opposed 
the war on their assumed humanitarian principles, soon 
adopted the idea, and having displaced the Girondists and 
cut off their heads used it to impose the Reign of Terror 
upon France. It should be remembered that that reign 
was carried on by a comparative handful of men, while the 
rest of Paris and France went on with their private affairs 
very much as at other times. 

For many years past there has been a dispute between 
Great Britain and the so-called republic of Venezuela as 
to the boundaries of their respective territories in South 
America, and it has latterly reached a point at which dip- 
lomatic intercourse between the two countries was sus- 

2l 



614 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

pended. On the 20th of July, 1895, Mr. Olney, "Secretary 
of State, wrote a letter to Mr, Bayard, our minister to 
Great Britain, to be laid before Lord Salisbury, of which, 
whatever may be the sins of Great Britain, the arrogant 
and offensive tone cannot be denied. It assumes as its 
basis the Monroe doctrine, though a flood of publicists in 
the United States came forward to show that the Monroe 
doctrine was wholly inapplicable and that the position 
advanced was an entirely new one. One or two extracts 
will show the character of that letter. 

That distance and three thousand miles of intervening ocean make 
any permanent political union between an European and an American 
state unnatural and inexpedient will hardly be denied. 

Why should it be so any more than in the case of 
Canada or Australia ? 

If, however, the forcible intrusion of European powers into Amer- 
ican politics is to be deprecated, if as it is to be deprecated it should 
be resisted and prevented, such resistance and prevention must come 
from the United States. 

That is to say, the government of the United States is 
to assume a protectorate over all the South American 
states whether they like it or not. 

To-day the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, 
and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its inter- 
position. 

Which proposition, considering that Great Britain owns 
as much territory on this continent as we do, and that 
territory several times as large is owned by other inde- 
pendent governments, does not shine by its modesty. 

Why ? It is not because of the pure friendship or good will felt 
for it. It is not simply by reason of its high character as a civilized 
state, nor because wisdom and justice and equity are the invariable 
characteristics of the dealings of the United States (!). It is because, 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 515 

in addition to all other grounds, its infinite resources combined with 
its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically- 
invulnerable. 

In plain terms because its right rests upon its might, or 
still more plainly because it can lick all creation. 

It should be kept in mind that the question is as to the 
boundary between two existing states, and Mr. Olney 
himself says : — 

The claims of both parties, it must be conceded, are of a somewhat 
indefinite nature. 

On the 17th of December President Cleveland sent a 
message to Congress of which the momentous peroration 
deserves to be quoted in extenso. 

Assuming, however, that the attitude of Venezuela will remain 
unchanged, the dispute has reached such a stage as to make it now 
incumbent upon the United States to determine with sufficient cer- 
tainty for its justification what is the true divisional line between the 
republic of Venezuela and British Guiana. 

In order that such an examination should be prosecuted in a thor- 
ough and satisfactory manner I suggest that Congress make an ade- 
quate appropriation for the expenses of a commission to be appointed 
by the executive, who shall make the necessary investigation and report 
upon the matter with the least possible delay. When such report is 
made and accepted it will, in my opinion, be the duty of the United 
States to resist by every means in its power, as a wilful aggression 
upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of 
any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any terri- 
tory which after the investigation we have determined of right belongs 
to Venezuela. 

In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the responsi- 
bility incurred and keenly realize all the consequences that may 
follow. 1 

As such a message sent to a European parliament with 
reference to another country would undoubtedly have 
been regarded as a declaration of war, it came upon this 

1 The italics appeared in the reproduction of this passage by an Eng- 
lish paper, 



516 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

country like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. On the 
next day, the 18th of December, the House of Representa- 
tives, without a single voice interposing an objection or 
asking for even a day of delay, passed a resolution giving 
the President power to appoint a commission and grant- 
ing one hundred thousand dollars for the expenses of the 
same. Being sent to the Senate and referred to the For- 
eign Affairs Committee the resolution was taken up and 
passed unanimously two days later. 

As it may be safely said that never before since the 
Civil War have both branches of Congress unanimously 
agreed with any president about anything, it is not sur- 
prising that the noisy and unthinking part of the country 
and especially of the press should have hailed this concur- 
rence with enthusiasm, and a torrent of applause at once 
burst forth. Men went about with blanched faces, asking 
one another if it was true that the majority of the people 
of this country really wanted war with Great Britain 
and almost holding their breath as they waited for the 
response from the other side. The losses to individuals 
from the fall of securities must have been numbered by 
the hundred million. Fortunately, in the present state of 
Europe, apart from other considerations, the last thing 
which Great Britain wishes for is a war with the United 
States. The tone of the press and of individuals, there- 
fore, was extremely conciliatory and the queen's speech 
at the opening of Parliament went so far as to say that 
"the United States have expressed a wish to cooperate 
in bringing to a close the Venezuela dispute." Mean- 
time the sober sense of this country had reasserted itself 
and weighty voices were raised to point out the folly and 
wickedness even of talking of war on such a pretext. 
The immediate danger passed by, but the " Jacobins " 
were puffed up by the very weakness and concessions of 
Great Britain, boasted loudly of the success they had 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 517 

achieved, and established a precedent of dangerous import 
for the future. 1 

But Congress is not so easily to be diverted from its 
purpose. At the same time there was going on in Cuba 
one of the chronic insurrections against the Spanish gov- 
ernment. Into the merits of the conflict it is not neces- 
sary to enter, but it may be assumed that the island of 
Cuba belongs to Spain and that the insurgents have no 
organized government, no recognized head, and no central 
point of departure. Entire neutrality or armed inter- 
ference seemed to be the only alternatives open to the 
United States. In the month of March, 1896, the Senate 
passed resolutions affirming that " the friendly offices of 
the United States should be offered by the President to 
the Spanish government for the recognition of the inde- 
pendence of Cuba." When this came to the House, Mr. 
Hitt, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, 
made the following pertinent remark : — 

Every gentleman in hearing that suggestion made or that proposi- 
tion presented to him must think in a moment what would be the 
response if a proposition were made to our government, for example 
by the British minister, presenting resolutions adopted by the British 
Parliament, asking and desiring us to consent at once to the indepen- 
dence of Texas, of Florida, or of Michigan. 

The substitute passed hy the House did not seem to 
better the case much, as it offered " friendly influence " to 
secure " a government by the choice of the people of 
Cuba." At any rate that was the opinion of the confer- 
ence committee as they voted to accept the Senate resolu- 
tion which was afterwards passed by the House. 

1 It is fair to admit that the friends of the President maintained that 
being aware of the war spirit in Congress he adopted this method of 
drawing the fire and awakening public opinion to the dangerous condition 
of affairs. If that is so it shows very strongly the necessity of a closer 
relation between the executive and the legislature, so that the country 
may be made aware of what is going on without a resort to such explo- 
sive and inflammatory expedients. 



618 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap. 

The Spanish nation, though much less powerful than 
the British, is more excitable and reckless of conse- 
quences, and has its passions less under control. The 
action of Congress was therefore received in a very dif- 
ferent spirit and apparently there was needed only a 
forward step on the part of the President to precipitate a 
war. Fortunately, again, Mr. Cleveland was by no means 
prepared to take such a responsibility. Two other sug- 
gestions here present themselves, — that the Republican 
party owed its great prominence to a successful war, and 
that in Congress, as we have seen, the interest of the 
nation is of very little account as compared with that of 
party. 

Let us suppose this spirit of Congress finally to prevail 
and that this country is forced into a war with Great 
Britain, all opposition being crushed by a factitious clamor 
of patriotism. Perhaps the imagination can compass the 
ultimate conquest of Canada, to be held on similar terms 
to those which bind Alsace and Lorraine to the German 
Empire. Evidently the army could not be disbanded at 
the close of the war but must continue to be maintained by 
tens if not hundreds instead of units of thousands. Of 
course there must be a general-in-chief at Washington, 
and there would be a plenty of men, of the kind which 
suggests itself without calling names, to point out the 
opportunity which lay before him. He might quietly 
draw together about that city some fifty thousand men, 
Russians, Germans, Slavs, and Italians, excellent soldiers 
and caring as little for the principles of Anglo-Saxon 
liberty as for the Ten Commandments. Suppose him on 
some fine morning to take a regiment to the Capitol, order 
Congress to disperse and then pay the same compliment 
to the Supreme Court. From whence could the slightest 
effectual resistance come in Washington even as it is 
to-day? It may be said that the States would come to 



xxi THE SPIRIT OF PARTY 519 

the rescue. How far that expectation is justified will be 
seen when we consider the State governments. At present 
two facts may be alluded to. In 1894 Chicago was in the 
hands of a mob. The railroads were tied up, business at 
a standstill, and the State authorities paralyzed. This an- 
archy continued until President Cleveland, on the ground 
of interference with the United States mails, sent a few 
companies of United States troops, when the whole disturb- 
ance collapsed at once and order was restored. Is it so 
certain that any more energy would be displayed in defence 
of freedom against violence, especially when powerfully 
organized, than there was then in defence of law and 
order ? 

Again, the District of Columbia is to-day under the 
government of three despotic commissioners appointed by 
the President and with no popular representation what- 
ever. Already a great many people through the country 
are turning towards that government with envious eyes 
as so much better than that under which they live, a state 
of mind not encouraging for resistance to the strong 
hand. 

Before leaving the federal government there is one 
other subject which ought to be treated. Thus far this 
work has had to do only with the executive and the legis- 
lature and the practical suppression of the former by the 
latter. But there is a third element, not less important, 
— the judiciary. It may well be said that there is no 
one thing which ministers more to the happiness and wel- 
fare of a people than an upright, independent, and power- 
ful judiciary. But the federal judges are dependent upon 
the executive not only for their appointment, but for the 
enforcement of their decrees. Usurpation by Congress in 
this direction can do almost as much harm as in the case 
of the executive and there are signs that more or less of 
this has already taken place. To treat the subject, how- 



520 THE LESSON OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT chap, xxi 

ever, with any certainty of touch and to avoid fatal 
mistakes requires a degree of technical knowledge which 
the author does not possess, and he therefore prefers to 
leave it untouched, hoping that others may be found as 
desirous and more competent to do it justice. 1 

1 This chapter is allowed to remain as it was written in 1896 for the 
light thrown upon it by subsequent events. 



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